[This issue, we sit down with professor, editor, author, and poet Kelly Jarvis. A frequent EHS contributor, Jarvis is also the author of the newly-released Selkie Moon. Here, she discusses her novella; her work with The Fairy Tale Magazine; fairy tales in the classroom; and her upcoming projects.]

Eternal Haunted Summer: Your novella, Selkie Moon, was just released by Incantation Press. First, congratulations! Second, why a story about selkies? What is it that draws you to the idea of shapeshifting seals?

Kelly Jarvis: Thank you so much! I am excited my story has been released to swim in the seas of publication!

I have always loved tales of transformation, so I am drawn to selkie stories. My favorite fairy tale is Beauty and the Beast which culminates in a miraculous transformation, and I am fascinated by the transformations embedded in mythology (Daphne becoming a tree, Zeus disguising himself as a swan, the seven sisters being transformed into stars to grace the night sky). Selkie legends, which feature beings who shift from seal to human form, have the added bonus of being set along the seashore, one of my favorite places.

The transformations in folklore fascinate me because they can be understood in both literal and metaphorical ways. The Beast’s physical shape is altered by Beauty’s love, but Beauty’s love for the Beast changes the way she sees him. A selkie becomes a human to cross the physical boundary between sea and land, but her shapeshifting represents our ability to transform ourselves as we move through the temporal settings of our lives. We are all hybrid creatures with animal bodies and human souls, and as a woman, wife, mother, writer, professor, daughter, and friend, I am constantly slipping in and out of the many roles which shape my identity.

Selkie Moon is a story about selkies, but at its heart, it is a story about storytelling, and I like to think of storytelling as a form of collaborative transformation. Stories change us, forcing us to shed our skins and swim in the inky waters of a writer’s imagination, and we change stories, lending our personal perspectives and cultural insights to their words. Isla, the narrator of Selkie Moon, is the daughter of storytellers. Her father, a fisherman, spins oral narratives about his boyhood on Orkney, while her mother, a mysterious woman, crafts tales with broken shells and shards of sea glass she gathers along the shore. These stories shape Isla’s understanding of life, just as Isla’s story shapes ours. Selkie stories often function as legends, a type of folklore that requires its audience to negotiate its truth status, and this makes them potent metaphors for the transformative power of storytelling.

EHS: Selkies have figured in Norse and Celtic, and especially northern Scottish, lore for some eight hundred years. Were there particular folktales you drew on while writing Selkie Moon? 

KJ: Selkie Moon is drawn from the Selkie Bride stories which circulate throughout Norse, Celtic, and Scottish folklore. Although each variant is specific to its individual region, the plot of a Selkie Bride tale turns on a marital union between a human and a selkie. Most often, a farmer or fisherman sees a selkie dancing on the shore and falls in love with her human form. He steals her seal pelt so she cannot return to the ocean, locking it away in his sea chest to compel her into marriage and motherhood. They live happily together for a time, raising children and building a home, but when one of their children (often their daughter) reveals the hidden location of the seal pelt, the selkie puts on her animal skin, dives into the waves, and is never seen again.

Selkie Bride tales are heartbreaking, but they are also beautiful. They are about the conflict between nature and humanity, the loss that accompanies mortal love, the longing for home, the rewilding of the feminine, and the search for our truest selves. I am a hopeless romantic, so I wanted to lend a “happier” ending to the Selkie Bride tale. I wanted to use the folklore’s depth to explore the complexities of love, presenting it as a choice which often comes with difficult consequences. I wanted to write a story about a fisherman and a selkie bride who both choose to love each other, and, although their love is true, it requires sacrifice and compromise, as all unions between people, families, and cultures do.

EHS: What sort of research went into Selkie Moon? Big stacks of books? Long discussions with folklorists and historians?

KJ: I first learned about selkie folklore while I was enrolled in a class called The Wine Dark Sea: Folklore of the Ocean at The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic. Terri Windling joined Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman to give an inspiring lecture on selkies, sharing legends, stories, poems, and songs about the seal people from Norse and Celtic lore. I watched the video recording of the lecture several times and began reading everything I could get my hands on. I also created a play list of selkie songs, and although collecting folk music may not seem like traditional research, listening to the haunting melodies helped me to feel the story I hoped to write.

Since selkie legends are linked to particular places, I researched the landscapes of Ireland and the Northern British Isles to locate the perfect setting for my story. I was drawn to Orkney, an archipelago of islands located north of Scotland and situated between the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. I loved the wild beauty and intriguing liminality of the islands which are rich in both Scottish and Nordic culture. I learned that North Ronaldsay, the northernmost island in the archipelago, is circled by a stone wall designed to separate the cultivated farmlands of the interior from the wild seaweed-eating sheep which roam along the shores. Selkie legends have long been used to explore the tumultuous interaction between humans and animals, so this detail about North Ronaldsay helped me to settle my story on Orkney.  

EHS: Stories often take on a life of their own. Did the plot ever change on you when you encountered something new or interesting in your research?

KJ: When I first set out to write a selkie story, I thought I would be writing a romance, and I was initially surprised when the voice of the selkie’s daughter, Isla, kept coming through in my early research and drafting process. Once I allowed Isla’s voice to take over, the romantic relationship I had planned to explore became a part of Isla’s origin story, and Selkie Moon transformed from a romance into a tale of marital conflict, family devotion, and personal identity. By the time I finished writing, the story was inseparable from Isla’s voice, and I have come to think of Selkie Moon as Isla’s story rather than my own.

My continued research into the landscape, culture, and folklore of Orkney definitely worked its way into the plot of my novella. I had already known of the islands’ beautiful contrasts, their soft sloping shores and their wild rocky coastlines, their ancient history and their vibrant, contemporary atmosphere, but I learned about St. Magnus Cathedral, known as Britain’s “Light in the North,” and read about the Kirkwall Ba’, an annual Christmas and New Year’s competition that challenges contestants to carry a hand-stitched leather ball between an inland goal and a watery bay. These details wove themselves into my descriptions of Orkney’s flora and fauna, reinforcing the liminality so important to shapeshifter stories. Like Isla’s voice, the setting became integral to Selkie Moon, and I hope I can visit Orkney one day to experience its magic in person.

EHS: Selkie Moon was originally released in serialized format through The Fairy Tale Magazine. How did that arrangement come about? Did you approach TFTM with the idea or did they come to you?

KJ: Selkie Moon began as a 5,000-word short story I wrote for a romance-themed summer issue of The Fairy Tale Magazine. We weren’t able to run the piece in its intended place, but Kate Wolford, my friend, writing mentor, and the founder and Editor Emeritus of The Fairy Tale Magazine, encouraged me to hold onto the story until it found a home. It was actually my love for your novelettes (like The Adventure of the Faerie Coffin and Geek Witch and the Treacherous Tome of Deadly Danger) which inspired me to expand my short story into novella range!

I sent beta copies of Selkie Moon to Kate and Lissa Sloan (the author of Glass and Feathers) for feedback, and, after reading it, Kate asked me if she could offer an advance copy of my novella as an incentive for readers to join The Fairy Tale Magazine’s Fairy Godparents Club. Of course I agreed! Our new Editor-in-Chief, Kristen Baum DeBeasi, supported the idea and graciously helped me polish my story for its final publication. Alison Weber, a talented writer and artist I met through The Fairy Tale Magazine, created an original selkie illustration to accompany the advance reader copy of Selkie Moon gifted to Fairy Godparents Club members. The production of my novella has truly been a collaborative project, and I am grateful to my found family at The Fairy Tale Magazine for their inspiration, help, and support.

EHS: In addition to your own work, which books or movies about selkies do you recommend? Any favorites that are a must for a selkie fan’s personal library?

KJ: The Great/Grey Selkie of Sule Skerry is a fascinating Scottish ballad about a selkie man who fathers a half-human child, and the Legend of Kopakonan, which hails from the Faroe Islands, twists the Selkie Bride tale into a story of revenge. Contemporary novels like Margo Lanagan’s The Brides of Rollrock Island and Rose Sutherland’s A Sweet Sting of Salt use selkie folklore to meaningfully explore gender, culture, and sexuality, and Jane Yolen’s The Last Selchie Child relays the mysteries of selkie life in captivating verse. Some of my favorite selkie films include Ondine, The Secrets of Roan Inish, and Song of the Sea. I recently purchased The Selkie Girl and Selkie (a wordless picture book) to use in my Children’s Literature class; I didn’t know about selkie folklore until my adulthood, and I love books that expand the imaginations of young readers! And my favorite way of sharing selkie stories is through music. Artists like John Doyle, Tori Amos, Kim Robertson, Jenny Sturgeon, Siobhan Miller, Anna Phoebe, and Eric Whitacre offer aching lyrics and wistful melodies about selkies. You can listen to my Selkie Moon Playlist on my website or create one of your own to transport yourself to the sea!

EHS: You also have a short story in Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers. Every contributor took a slightly different approach to the idea of the fairy godmother. How did you tackle the subject? And do you plan to write more fairy godmother tales?

KJ: I love stories about fairy godmothers! When I wrote “A Story of Soil and Stardust,” my contribution to Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers, I had just learned about Baba Yaga, the terrifying witch of Slavic folklore who lives in an enchanted house that roams through the forest on chicken legs. Baba Yaga features in Vasilisa the Brave, a Russian story collected by Alexander Afanasyev. In this Cinderella-like story, Vasilisa is persecuted by her stepmother and stepsisters, and she takes comfort in a magic doll given to her by her deceased mother. The doll helps Vasilisa locate Baba Yaga’s macabre cottage, complete the witch’s impossible tasks, and take revenge on her stepfamily.

Baba Yaga, who is just as likely to eat a young maiden as she is to help her, stands in opposition to the character of Cinderella, a young girl bound by her own mother’s edict to “remain pious and good.” I began to wonder what might happen to Cinderella if her godmother was a witch instead of a fairy, and I mixed elements of Cinderella and Vasilisa the Brave together to create something new, casting Baba Yaga as the godmother of a young girl named Elya. I wanted Baba Yaga to teach her goddaughter to step outside the conventions of acceptable feminine behavior and claim her personal power. In some ways, Baba Yaga’s rewilding of her goddaughter parallels the selkie bride’s return to the sea. Folklore teaches us the importance of acknowledging and embracing the untamed aspects of our identities, even if we choose not to use them.

I would love to write another fairy godmother tale one day! In many fairy tales, the fairy godmother  (who can take human, animal, or even plant form) is a symbol of the missing mother’s enduring love. There is something beautiful about the idea that death cannot erase a mother’s desire to protect her child, but there is also something beautiful about a fairy godmother (or godfather) who functions independently in a story. You don’t have to have given birth to someone to wield the power of the mother. We can all be fairy godparents, offering our love and assistance to those in need. A fairy godmother can emerge from our found family, and this can bring comfort to people who may never have felt the warmth of their own mother’s love.

EHS: Stories play a pivotal role in the lives of your characters; the stories they tell one another, the stories they tell themselves, the stories around which the community as a whole defines and identifies itself. Stories are just as important in the lives of real people in the real world. As someone who is personally and professionally dedicated to understanding stories and storytelling, what do you think are some important stories that we have neglected and forgotten, and why are they important?

KJ: I think it is important, particularly in the classroom, to interrogate the reasons why cultures uphold some stories and neglect others, but I don’t think a story, once told, can ever fully be forgotten. Stories are powerful things that morph and change and reemerge in new forms and contexts. In his novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie describes the Ocean of the Streams of Story as “the biggest library in the universe,” made up of “a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different colour, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity.” Discarded stories may settle at the bottom of the ocean, but they never truly disappear. All it takes to bring a story back into circulation is one storyteller brave enough to dive beneath the waves and carry its beauty back to the surface for all to see.

As a teacher, I know that for every story I place on my syllabus, I am leaving “a thousand thousand thousand and one” stories behind, so I focus on teaching my students how to understand stories so that the work we do in class becomes a template to help them unlock the magic of all the stories they will encounter in their lives, whether those stories come from classic literature, folklore, pop culture, or everyday conversation. When I was researching Orkney, I learned about groatie buckies, elusive cowrie shells so difficult to find that those who come upon them are thought to be blessed with good fortune. Their name even derives from an old Scottish word for a coin (a groat), underscoring their value. In Selkie Moon, Isla’s mother, a storyteller, is able to fill an entire jar with groatie buckies simply because she knows how to look for them. It is a small scene in the novella, but to me, the scene is a metaphor for learning how to understand stories. A story’s magic is always present; you simply have to know how to look for it. Once you learn how to look, the elusive cowrie shells of a story will reveal themselves, giving readers the currency they need to participate in the construction of meaning.

I love journals like Eternal Haunted Summer and The Fairy Tale Magazine which give new life to stories that have been relegated to the nursery or banned from popular circulation. Sharing stories is an essential human act, and the more we seek out neglected and forgotten stories, the richer we will be.

EHS: As a professor of literature and writing, you often make use of fairy tales in the classroom. Have you ever been surprised by a class’s response to a particular tale? If so, how? 

KJ: I started teaching fairy tales in my Children’s Literature and Young Adult Literature classes, and my students (mostly pre-service teachers) were often shocked by the complex themes they found hiding beneath the simple narratives! I began incorporating fairy tales and folklore into my general education classes, assigning Indigenous creation myths and trickster tales to my American Literature students and teaching fairy tales side by side with the legends and mythology already anthologized in British Literature and World Literature textbooks. Before long, I had designed writing and first year experience courses about folklore and fairy tale, and I continue to be delighted with my students’ enthusiasm for the material!

Although I can usually anticipate the responses of my students, I was completely surprised by one student’s reaction to reading Bluebeard last year. I love to teach Bluebeard for the shock value alone (my students don’t usually associate serial murder with fairy tale), but I also love discussing the nuanced power dynamics of intimate relationships and the allure of transgressive curiosity at work in the story. I always ask my students if they would “violate the inhibition” and open Bluebeard’s forbidden closet, and usually they say they would. Last semester, a student passionately argued not only that he would not open the door, but that Bluebeard’s wife shouldn’t have opened the door either. It was a fair response rooted in his commitment to privacy and his respect for personal boundaries, but given the plot of Bluebeard, it shocked me nonetheless! I would absolutely open the door!

EHS: Which book fairs, conventions, or other events do you plan to attend in the foreseeable future?

KJ: I recently joined two writer’s groups in my home state (Connecticut Book Festivals and Nutmeg Lit. Fest). Both groups offer regular lectures, readings, and book signing events, and I plan to attend several this year to meet local authors and artists. Since my works in progress bring fairy tale and folklore into conversation with romance, I am also excited about two upcoming romance conventions in my area (RomantiConn and Fall in Love New England). I have met most of my writing friends through virtual spaces (like The Fairy tale Magazine and Eternal Haunted Summer), and I hope to build my writing community by attending in-person events.

EHS: What other projects are you working on?

KJ: As the Contributing Writer and YouTube Correspondent for The Fairy Tale Magazine, I am always working on short stories, poems, interviews, essays, and book reviews for our upcoming issues, our YouTube Channel, and our blog. Our Fall/Winter Issue is all about trolls, and I will be writing about my trip to visit six of Thomas Dambo’s giant trolls this summer! I am also editing my first novel, Sea and Stars, which is a blend of historical romance and magical realism inspired by Beauty and the Beast, and expanding two of my short stories to novella length for independent publication. The first, Cranberries in the Snow, is a holiday romance linked to fairy tales of kind and unkind girls, and the second, The Ghosts of Milden Hall, is a dark academic romance with shades of Bluebeard (spoiler alert: the protagonist is going to open the door).