A guest column by Jeana Jorgensen, PhD

I’ve been a folklorist since I finished my first semester at UC Berkeley in the fall of 2000. I’d wandered in thinking I was going to be a history major, and ended up taking an introduction to cultural anthropology, introduction to linguistics, introduction to religious studies, and a freshman seminar on fairy tales. By the end of that semester, I was like, “I want all these things combined as one thing forever” and you know what? That’s kinda what folklore is.

I also lucked out in that I was able to study with Alan Dundes, one of the most eminent American folklorists of all time. From Dundes, I learned not only the basics of folklore studies (in a time before most library resources were digitized!) but I also learned that all products of human culture were worthy of study, even when those items were violent, bigoted, or disgusting.

The study of sexual folklore was largely held to occupy the latter category: filth that occasionally popped up and demanded our attention, alongside the more elegant and meaningful forms of folklore like creation myths, fairy tales, and so on. And there was a corresponding history of censorship of sexual folklore; it was often considered unprintable, and even Stith Thompson’s monumental Motif Index of Folk Literature left out a lot of “erotic” motifs. But if humans made it and maintained it, Dundes argued that it could tell us something about ourselves, even if that something might also not be anything we wanted to acknowledge.

I did research for Dundes about how to classify dead baby jokes, about the jokes Americans told about Nazi German and Japanese soldiers during World War II, and about incest in European fairy tales. And then I went to grad school, and acquired specialties in feminist theory, queer theory, and gender studies to go with my graduate degrees in folklore from Indiana University.

At the same time, I was always “that friend” you could ask about sex stuff. I grew up in a fairly shame-free household and I was a voracious reader, so if I didn’t know something, I generally knew where to find it. So at some point, things clicked for me and I began researching sex education, both its history and how to go about getting involved as a sex educator.

Ultimately, while I went to a bunch of cool conferences and met a bunch of sex educators, therapists, and so on, I stayed in my academic bubble and just did a few talks here and there rather than going full-on for a sex education career (and those can be quite varied; I know people who work in sex shops who don’t have certifications or degrees but have a ton of amazing knowledge, while others have worked at Planned Parenthood or in different areas of nursing, all while disseminating as much sex ed info as they could manage).

But the topic stayed with me, and I developed and taught a course about cultural conflict and sex education, once again using my folklore background to interpret the past and present of sex education in the U.S.

After about a decade of this, I was finally like, I should write a darn book! And so I did. I’d already written Folklore 101 and Fairy Tales 101, so it made sense that I could apply the same strategy here, and brain-dump years’ worth of material into an accessible, engaging book that would have way more fun and disturbing facts than academic jargon.

Sex Education 101 is unique in that it utilizes a folklore-studies lens to understand the history of sex education as grounded in moral panics, rumors, and other classic folklore genres. Which is wild, because all these folklore genres went on to influence public policy! Like, to take just one example, gossip and rumors about what kinds of people were supposedly dangerous hosts of sexually transmitted illnesses influenced the U.S. government in its nefarious plan to indefinitely detain and treat supposedly “loose” women for decades! And practically no one has heard of this “America Plan” unless you’re in a very specific vein of history. So I’ve remained true to my folkloristic roots even as I’ve branched out into topics that you don’t typically see in folklore books or on a folklore syllabus.

Anyway, I’m happy to have a place among Storied Imaginarium authors because this community is all about seeking the unexpected connections, whether delightful or horrifying, between the varied threads of traditional creative genres. My newest book is just one example of the kinds of wacky and weird ways we put folklore into dialogue with other areas of humanity.

My new book: Sex Education 101 (order here!)

My existing books: Folklore 101 (order here) & Fairy Tales 101 (order here)

The Foxy Folklorist blog at Only Sky

My personal site, jeanajorgensen.com

My sex education site, doctorjeana.com

One of the best parts of working with writers is celebrating their successes. Over the last few years, Alison Colwell has published several stories that started in workshops at The Storied Imaginarium including Eight Reasons for Silence” (Tangled Locks Journal, October 2022), “The Frog Prince’s Reluctant Bride” (Daily Science Fiction, July 2021), “Hindsight” (The Drabble, May 2021), and “Regrets” (The Drabble, April 2021).

Recently, Alison was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts Grant to work on a series of interconnected essays that weave fairy tales with memoir. For a sneak peek at these stunning essays, check out “Fairy Tale Fathers,” which was released earlier this month in The Humber Literary Review.

What are the Canada Council Create grants?

The “Explore and Create Grant” funds Canadian artists, and organizations committed to the creation of innovative, vibrant and diverse art. The program advances Canadian artistic practices by encouraging artists to investigate creative processes and take risks that lead to the development of unique works destined to connect with the public.

In the fall of 2022 I submitted a proposal for Ashes & Daydreams, and asked for time to write. In the spring of 2023 I received a Canada Council Grant.

Where did the idea for your project come from?

I’ve always written fiction and memoir, but it wasn’t until Carina’s “Intersections: Science Fiction, Fairy Tales and Myth” class in the spring of 2021, that it occurred to me to combine the two. We were studying the Rapunzel Fairy Tale, and reading about the witch locking Rapunzel in the tower in order to protect her from the dangers of the world, really resonated with me. Two years earlier, my daughter had been diagnosed with anorexia, and the doctors had placed her on bed rest, restricted to her hospital room on the seventh floor, against her will.

That juxtaposition of ideas led to the creation of the essay “Arriving on the 7th Floor” which considers what happens when we are the villains of our own story? In Rapunzel, it’s the witch who cruelly imprisons the young girl in the tower. But that had been the only way I could keep my daughter safe. What if “villain” is the role circumstances force you to play?

After the Rapunzel essay, I wrote another in that used the East of the Moon, West of the Sun Fairy Tale to reflect on my abusive first marriage. Suddenly I had a thrilling new way of looking at my world. I started to use words to make sense of my world, my story, my life, and the act of shaping experience into narrative helped me to see that an arc existed. Just like in old myths, narrative helped me to see that while there are dark nights of the soul and moments where all seems lost, there are also high points where the hero returns with the elixir.

Carina has been a huge supporter of my hybrid essays from the very beginning and encouraged me to seek publication and consider what a collection might look like.

What do you envision the finished project will look like?

The working title for the collection is: Ashes & Daydreams. It is a series of interconnected essays that weave fairy tales with trauma narrative and memoir. Using the framework of familiar fairy tales to ask questions about how we see ourselves, what archetypal characters we play in our own lives and forces us to examine the stories we tell ourselves about our own lived experiences.

Writing memoir through the lens of fairy tale forces us to examine both the stories of our own lives and the fairy tales, both Disney and Grimm, which for many of us, fulfill the role of myth and have unconsciously shaped the structures of our lives. The myth that true love will reveal the Prince Charming hidden inside every beast can be incredibly damaging to women. Ashes & Daydreams is an invitation to look at those fairy stories in the context of real life.

Ashes & Daydreams delves into issues of intimate partner violence, addiction, mental illness, anorexia, parenting, and poverty. I can speak to these from my own lived experience, which is why I believe it’s important to tell these stories and provide hope and insight to others battling the same limiting trauma narratives.

Each essay is a self-contained story, mirroring a traditional book of Fairy Tales. The shorter format allows readers to step in and out of the trauma narrative. However, the essays are all drawn from my own life therefore the essays in the collection are interconnected. The final section of the collection retells the original versions of the tales, to give context for anyone unfamiliar with the source material.

The first draft of Ashes & Daydreams will be complete in the fall of 2023.

Takeaways? What are the obvious benefits to receiving the grant?

I’m a single mother of two teens – both of whom have had serious mental health challenges. Making time to write, while working full time to support the three of us, means making sacrifices. The Canada Council Grant allowed me to not take on a second job this summer, and has enabled me to dedicate more of my time to writing.

And the hidden benefits to receiving the grant?

Like most writers, I suffer from imposter syndrome. When you are writing alone at your desk, it’s hard to really believe that what you have to say is important to others. Receiving the Canada Council Grant was an incredible boost to my writerly ego. It means that a jury of professional Canadian writers believes in what I’m doing. They believe I’m my ideas are unique and worthwhile. That’s pretty magical!

Alison Colwell spends her time creating imaginary worlds, crafting memoir from fairy tales and learning how to blur the lines between creative non-fiction and fiction. 

When not writing she can be found teaching kindergarten kids how to bake bread, or grown-ups how to cook stinging nettles, or caring for her two teens, three cats and one old dog.

Connect with Alison at https://www.alisoncolwell.com/.