pod_together, poetree, and "The Fairest Of Them All": genesis

[alexconall]

intersectional
feminist author poet
social justice bard

meet alexconall
poetree host for this week


Today I'd like to talk about how my pod_together project, "The Fairest Of Them All", came to be.

I don't remember when I got the idea to write a collection of princess-focused fairy tales retold in a feminist fashion. I didn't mention it in the bio included in A Dinner of Herbs in late March; the first instance of the title Self-Rescuing Princess in my email history was in mid-May, the first instance of the previous title at the end of April, so it must have been sometime in April.

It's coincidence, I swear, that I registered for a women's studies course on Disney for summer of 2013.

I saw the pod_together signups when poetree first mentioned them, I think. I didn't sign up, because pod_together is a fannish challenge and I haven't been feeling very fannish since I began my slow slide out of Supernatural fandom sometime circa the airing of the first episode of season eight, last fall. Then poetree started hosting the pod_together-affiliated icebreaker week, for participants and nonparticipants alike. I commented explaining in tanka why I didn't sign up. jjhunter reminded me, also in tanka, that transformative work of public domain materials counted and expressed an interest in reading my work. It so happened that that was the first week of class, and one of the assigned viewings was Disney's Snow White.

Hexameter seemed to fit my reply, I was already thinking about writing a feminist retelling of Snow White, and I needed a rhyme for 'readers'. I said, "No, brain, I will not write Snow White in hexameter."

Under three hours later, I had a third of what became "The Fairest Of Them All". And it was too late to sign up for pod_together.

Story of my life, y'all.

During the week I'll be posting short reflections on the process of the project, and on Saturday, I'll post the poem in its entirety.