Spanning over 40 years of writing, Sara Maitland’s Selected Stories brings together highlights from a phenomenal career in short fiction. Traditional folk stories, myths and fairy tales are expertly interrogated, modernised and given feminist and scientific re-readings. Drawing from classical, Norse, Inuit and other pagan mythologies, these stories find folkloric archetypes alive and well in every conceivable modern context. Formally innovative, emotionally edgy and deeply imbued with a sense of landscape, they speak to our abiding concerns about humanity’s relationship with the natural world, and the past’s uncanny ability to creep into our present and re-shape it, according to its own needs.
Sara Maitland (born 27 February 1950, London) grew up in Galloway and studied at Oxford University. Her first novel, Daughters of Jerusalem, was published in 1978 and won the Somerset Maugham Award. Novels since have included Three Times Table (1990), Home Truths (1993) and Brittle Joys (1999), and one co-written with Michelene Wandor — Arky Types (1987). She is also the author of The Book of Silence (2010) and Gossip from the Forrest: A Search for the Hidden Roots of Our Fairytales (2012). Her short story collections include Telling Tales (1983), A Book of Spells (1987) and On Becoming a Fairy Godmother (2003). Her short story 'Far North' was adapted for the screen by Asif Kapadia in 2007 and starred Sean Bean and Michelle Yeoh. Sara's science-inspired stories have also featured in several Comma Press anthologies including The New Uncanny (2008), When It Changed (2009), Litmus (2011),