I Think I’ve Heard This Story Before…

Hi, my name is Joe Thomas, and I’m a Graduate Editor for Miracle Monocle and the Managing Editor for our Tales That Survived the Fire micro-anthology project. I wanted to talk for a bit about Tales and some of the excitement behind the anthology from our editors’ perspective. 

Perhaps you’re a fan of Rick Roidian’s Percy Jackson series, the Coen brothers’ 2000 film O Brother Where Art Thou, or even Percival Everett’s recent Pulitzer-winning novel James. These are all stories working in conversation with writers from cultural backgrounds that are, in different ways, divorced from the ones each author is writing in. 

Homer and the Odyssey versus the culture of the American South after the Civil War; Hesiod and the Greek pantheon with the interests of a Young Adult literary audience; Mark Twain and the Antebellum American South versus the persisting American struggle against racial prejudice. The retelling of these stories has been met with much success in the world of popular interest, and in a lot of ways, it’s because it gives old and interesting tales a view through a contemporary lens. It not only puts the work in conversation with a different cultural “then” or “now,” but it reintroduces these significant narratives with exciting new perspectives. 

Everett’s James explores the story of Huckleberry Finn through a lens not available to Mark Twain as a white southern man; Nicholas Frankel’s The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray gives the perspective of Oscar Wilde’s original work that he wasn’t able to publish during the institutionally homophobic era that he lived in. Retellings are in these ways important, and I think they’ve found so much success because readers everywhere have recognized that.

However, although we at MM love all kinds of retellings, for Tales that Survived the Fire, we specifically want pieces that engage the lesser-known legends of people with niche and interesting backgrounds. There have been many avenues already for people reconsidering stories from Christianity or Greek mythos, and although these kinds of retellings may have a place in our anthology, we’re a lot more interested in ones that reconsider the myths that aren’t talked about as much. Would the Pueblo Ant be rioting in the streets of Manhattan? What would the Will-o’-the-wisp look like in a 21st-century context? How would the East Asian Kirin successfully operate a toaster? 

We’re fans of all kinds of myths and retellings, and we’re putting this anthology together because we want to see more of them in the literary world. If these are the kinds of things that you like as well, then I hope you follow us along as we put together this project, and consider getting yourself a copy come publication.

With much sincerity,

Joe Thomas

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