Tales for Our Times

New York Times bestselling author Betsy Cornwell ’10 has made a name for herself by reimagining classic fairy tales for today’s young-adult readers.

First there was Mechanica (2015), her steampunk retelling of Cinderella. Then The Forest Queen (2018), her feminist retelling of the Robin Hood legend. And now The Circus Rose (2020), her queer retelling of Snow-White and Rose-Red, a German folktale popularized by the Brothers Grimm. In a starred review, Kirkus calls Cornwell’s new book “dazzling.” The first sentences would jolt anyone out of a quarantine stupor:

Rosie and I are twins, but half sisters.

It happened just how you’d guess, of course. Mama loved two men at the same time, and she slept with them both in the same month.

When our fathers wanted her to choose between them, she left them both before she even knew that we were coming.

We might as well have the same father, though, for all we saw of either of them as children. Two absent fathers are the same as one.

But they’re different men, and people do insist on being shocked.

This story appears as part of the Smithies Create column in the Summer 2020 issue of the Smith Alumnae Quarterly.

Photograph by Tess Harper Molloy