Fairy Tale expert to open exhibition

Happily Ever After is pleased to announce that Dr Caroline Webb, an academic at the University of Newcastle, will formally open the exhibition on midday Saturday 11^th June. Caroline Webb studies and teaches English literature since 1900, focusing on Modernism and on contemporary fiction, especially fantastic fiction.  She is particularly interested in how recent British women writers have rewritten fairy tales to think about the female life: her publications include discussion of A.S. Byatt's "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" (Hecate 29, 2003), Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber" (in Literature and Sensation, Cambridge Scholars 2009) and Jeanette Winterson's "Story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses" (in Postmodern Reinterpretations of Fairy Tales, Lampeter 2011).  She is currently serving as Secretary of the Australasian Children's Association for Research and is working on a critical book on British fantasy literature.

Carmel Bird and Cape Grimm

Happily Ever After is incredibly proud to announce that Carmel Bird will be participating in our exhibition. Carmel has kindly allowed us to use two extracts from the brilliant Cape Grimm (the extracts being the fictional letter that forms the prologue to the novel, and the section that begins on page 226 with 'It was three weeks before...' and ends on page 227 with 'Caleb had been taken by the squid'). Exhibition participants, artists and writers, are asked to create a single image or text in response to one or both of these extracts. Happily Ever After plans to designate a 'Carmel Bird Corner' in the gallery to display the results. Please get in touch if you'd like to participate!

Funding and touring

We're thrilled to announce that Happily Ever After is the recipient of a NAVA marketing grant. This means that instead of an operating budget of practically nil, we have funding to promote the exhibition. Huzzah! We have booked advertisements in Peppermint magazine, Imprint magazine (Print Council of Australia) and the Australian Book Arts Journal, with more to follow. Thank you so much to the good people at NAVA.

Today we confirmed that after the exhibition at John Paynter Gallery in Newcastle, Happily Ever After will travel to Artspace Mackay, another fantastic venue and one with a great tradition of supporting this genre. Exhibition dates at Mackay are 22nd July-28 October, more details to follow.