Kate Bernheimer is a distinguished scholar, author, and editor celebrated for her groundbreaking contributions to fairy tales. As a writer of fiction, she has published two story collections, including How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales, and three novels. Maria Tatar (Professor Emeritus, Program in Folklore & Mythology, Harvard University) writes, “A master of minimalist style, Kate Bernheimer taps into the poetry of fairy tales to reveal the dread that seeps into ordinary things as well as the redemptive power of language and story.” She also is a vanguard editor of new fairy tales and essays about fairy tales, including as editor of the World Fantasy Award winning and bestselling My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales and xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, and as editor of Fairy Tale Review, an award winning literary magazine credited with igniting a fairy tale movement. Her books have been translated into Catalan, Chinese, French, Korean, Italian, Spanish, and many other languages. Her nonfiction about fairy tales appears such places as The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and NPR's "All Things Considered." Bernheimer’s thought leadership extends beyond academia and literature into public speaking and media appearances. She has been a featured speaker at museums, conferences, and literary festivals, where she shares her inspirational insights on the ethics and aesthetics of fairy tales from antiquity to the present. She relishes, especially, her architectural collaborations with her brother, Andrew Bernheimer of Bernheimer Architecture, featured in a long-running series in Places Journal and a recent book of the same title, Fairy Tale Architecture. To quote The New York Times, "Anyone attracted to fairy tales and fables should check out the stories and criticism of Kate Bernheimer."
