Collections

“It doesn't seem too hasty to exclaim, ‘Classic!’” — Booklist , starred review “An original voice, and an original vision: crystalline, precise, mordant and devastating.” —Ellen Kushner A Mythopoeic Award finalist Mythic Delirim Books is proud to make World Fantasy Award and Locus Award winner Theodora Goss’s 2006 story collection In the Forest of Forgetting available in electronic format. With an introduction by Terri Windling, this book gathers sixteen tales from an author that Locus at the time dubbed “one of the more distinctive, graceful, and haunting new voices in fantasy.” Cover art by Virginia Lee.

Voices from Fairyland collects fantastical poems by Mary Coleridge, Charlotte Mew, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Theodora Goss and offers four new essays by Goss. Goss writes in her introductory essay: "I have chosen to focus on poems by Mary Coleridge, Charlotte Mew, and Sylvia Townsend Warner because of all the poets I could have included, they are the ones whom I think have been most unjustly neglected -- the most talented among those whose talents have gone largely unrecognized."

“The collection you hold in your hands is otherworldly, it is elegant, it is delicate. It is graceful, it is exquisite and ethereal. It is full of flowers and fairies and a piercing, thorny longing.” —from the introduction by Catherynne M. Valente A Mythopoeic Award finalist Songs for Ophelia gathers together eighty of Theodora Goss's otherworldly poems which lead the reader, as though under a spell, through the unfolding of the seasons and into the realm of pure magic."Willows, dancing maidens, gypsies, mothers, lovers, daughters, magic animals, living waters, and transformations of all kinds abound in these gorgeous poems. With her formal prosody, her fairytale subjects, and her insights on love and loss and longing, Goss manages, Janus-like, to look back to the Victorians and inward at the heart of a modern woman with intelligence and grace." —Delia ShermanCover art by Virginia Lee

2020 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Winner for Adult Literature! 2020 Locus Award finalist for Best Collection Contains "A Country Called Winter," 2020 Locus Award finalist for Best Novelette "I was expecting this to be good, but it's wonderful. Seeing these pieces together makes me realize what a vivid, authentic and important voice Goss is. These are real fairytales, magical, unsettling, touching, and brilliant. I loved every word." —Jo Walton, World Fantasy, Nebula, and Hugo award-winning author of Among Others “Fairy tales are clothing, and to retell them is fashion. The fashion of these particular stories and poems is an abundance of lace, roses and porcelain contrasting with fur, snow and blood.” —Amal El-Mohtar, The New York Times "As a Hungarian-American raised on Hans Christen Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, Goss takes obvious delight in reweaving classic European folk tales to reveal new, often deeply feminist, perspectives . . . This toothsome collection is best read in one go." —Publishers Weekly, starred review A young woman hunts for her wayward shadow at the school where she first learned magic--while another faces a test she never studied for as ice envelopes the world. The tasks assigned a bookish boy lead him to fateful encounters with lizards, owls, trolls and a feisty, sarcastic cat. A bear wedding is cause for celebration, the spinning wheel and the tower in the briar hedge get to tell their own stories, and a kitchenmaid finds out that a lost princess is more than she seems. The sea witch reveals what she hoped to gain when she took the mermaid's voice. A wiser Snow White sets out to craft herself a new tale. In these eight stories and twenty-three poems, World Fantasy Award winner Theodora Goss retells and recasts fairy tales by Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Oscar Wilde. Sometimes harrowing, sometimes hilarious, always lyrical, the works gathered in Snow White Learns Witchcraft re-center and empower the women at the heart of these timeless narratives. Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Jane Yolen, in her introduction, proclaims that Goss "transposes, transforms, and transcends times, eras, and old tales with ease. But also there is a core of tough magic that runs through all her pieces like a river through Faerie . . . I am ready to reread some of my new favorites." More praise for Snow White Learns Witchcraft "Theodora Goss re-fleshes and re-clothes old tales in multifarious ways. Sometimes the stories' new garments are classic and mythic, sometimes they're up-to-the-minute, twenty-first-century creations, fresh cuts and colors that bring new truths from the underlying structures. Through prose and poetry, Goss shines her unique light into the fairytale forest—and many bright eyes gleam back." —Margo Lanagan, New York Times-bestselling and World Fantasy Award-winning author of Tender Morsel "Theodora Goss's Snow White Learns Witchcraft is a gorgeous, lyric collection of fairy tale retellings. Goss has the ability—the witchcraft—to be able to see the heart of the tale, and show it, polished and reflected and new, to the reader. I loved these stories and poems, their wildness, their beauty, their truth." —Kat Howard, Alex Award-winning author of An Unkindness of Magicians "With each story, Theodora Goss weaves new myths from the threads of childhood and legend. This collection does what the best songs and poems and spells do: slips gently into your consciousness, then slowly changes the way you see the world. A wonderful addition to Goss's works." —Fran Wilde, World Fantasy, Nebula, and Hugo finalist and author of the award-winning Bone Universe trilogy Cover art by Ruth Sanderson

A monumental career retrospective "This vibrant collection brings together World Fantasy Award winner Goss's exquisite interpretations of and variations on familiar folk and fairy tales. The [poems and stories] span the length of Goss's career ... All approach well-known stories from unexpected angles and with deep empathy for the characters ... The abundance of pieces sometimes has the effect of a musical fugue: common motifs, places, and characters echo through the works, with each reappearance adding something fresh." - Publishers Weekly "For Goss, fairy tales are less a set of texts than a language she's become fluent in ... the result is a lyrical, resonant voice and a vision not quite like anyone else's." - Locus A wicked stepsister frets over all the ways in which she failed to receive her mother's love. A lost woman travels through an enchanted forest looking for someone who can remind her of her name. A girl must wear down seven pairs of shoes to gain help from a witch. A fox makes a life with a human, but neither can deny their true natures. A young woman returns to her childhood home and the fantastic stories she left there. A man lets himself be taken prisoner by the Snow Queen to prove that the woman who loves him would walk barefoot through the ice to save him. Medusa cuts her hair for love. The Collected Enchantments gathers retellings of folk and fairy tales in prose and verse from World Fantasy and Locus award-winning author Theodora Goss, creator of The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club series. Drawing from her Mythopoeic Award-nominated collections In the Forest of Forgetting and Songs for Ophelia and her Mythopoeic Award-winning tome Snow White Learns Witchcraft , and adding new and uncollected stories and poems, The Collected Enchantments provides a resounding demonstration of how, as Hugo and Nebula award winner Jo Walton writes, Goss provides "a vivid, authentic and important voice" that, in the words of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association Grand Master Jane Yolen, "transposes, transforms, and transcends times, eras, and old tales with ease." PRAISE FOR THEODORA GOSS "In the tradition of great modern fantasists like Angela Carter and Marina Warner, Theodora Goss's sublime tales are modern classics-beautiful, sly, sensual and deeply moving . . . I envy any reader encountering Goss's work for the first time." - Elizabeth Hand "Goss's language fits together like gems in a complex crown, a diadem of images and motifs, resting gently on the head, but with a deceptive weight." - Catherynne M. Valente "Theodora Goss re-fleshes and re-clothes old tales in multifarious ways. Through prose and poetry, Goss shines her unique light into the fairytale forest-and many bright eyes gleam back." - Margo Lanagan With cover art by Catrin Welz-Stein and interior black and white illustrations by Paula Arwen Owen.