In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss

In my stories, there's a ground under your feet - it may be a shifting ground, but it's still there.” So I took a lot of elements and techniques from fairytales. There's one called 'The Belt' which I had a difficult time writing, because I think it's a really awful and disturbing story but I wanted to make the prose itself beautiful.

They certainly have elements that are not comfortable or comforting, that are frightening, but I think there's something about them that's closer to fantasy than horror. I teach a course where we do vampire stories, from Lord Ruthven to Fritz Leiber's 'Girl With the Hungry Eyes' and Angela Carter's 'The Lady of the House of Love', and what I tell my students is, 'The shudder is the sign of the uncanny.' So the rug of your understanding of the world is pulled out from under you, and that's when you shudder. “The uncanny is something you experience when you think you're living in a rational world and then something makes you think maybe the old superstitions are right - maybe there are ghosts and vampires. Since I was a child, I've always felt the fantastic impulse more strongly, but I think realistic representation is important, because that's how you make fantasy convincing. Writers have two impulses: to represent what we know as accurately as possible (the mimetic impulse) and to get away from that and be as imaginative as possible (the fantastic impulse). “As a fantasy writer, I see literature as a line between the two poles of realism and fantasy - not as literary genres but as ways of perceiving the world. She is also a poet, and winner of a Rhysling Goss co-edited anthology Interfictions with Delia Sherman (2007), and is a member of the Interstitial Arts Foundation. Book collections include chapbook The Rose in Twelve Petals and full-length collection In the Forest of Forgetting (2006). Other notable stories include World Fantasy finalist 'The Wings of Meister Wilhelm' (2004), Nebula finalist 'Pip and the Fairies' (2005), and three related stories about enigmatic supernatural figure Emily Gray: 'Miss Emily Gray' (2004), 'Conrad' (2006), and 'Lessons with Miss Gray' (2006). Her first published story was 'The Rose in Twelve Petals' (2002).

She graduated from the University of Virginia, attended Harvard Law School and worked as a lawyer for four years, then went to Boston University, where she is currently pursuing a PhD in English. Theodora Goss was born in Budapest, Hungary, and immigrated to the US when she was seven.

In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss