Post-Modern Cinderella
by Seanan McGuire
I have seen our post-modern Cinderella Embodied in the woman who danced her slow and subtle dances with Feet nimbly balanced on shallow-bottomed drinking glasses Used for water and for cheap wine poured out of brittle bottles. Every day must be a fairy tale when your soles Press down against the glass, hips rocked by the rhythm of foreign seas, Fingers jangling with the sound of silver bells. I have seen our post-modern Cinderella Silvering through the faux-Moroccan gloom like someone else's happy ever after, Sword on her hip, toes bare against the glass, and I have dreamed of her. When the ball is over, does she shed her saffron silk and silver bells, Give some faceless prince her sweet but firm farewells, Leave her drinking-glass slippers behind and walk, barefoot, Through the shivering San Francisco night?
Seanan McGuire lives in Northern California, where she shares a crumbling old farm house with three enormous cats, an incredible assortment of books and movies, and whatever bits of native wildlife have recently managed to find their way through the hole in the foundation. She won the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (it came with a tiara), and continues to insist that this makes her the Princess of Australia. Her latest publications are Late Eclipses, the fourth October Daye adventure, and Deadline, under the name Mira Grant. Her first book as Mira, Feed, has been nominated for the 2011 Hugo Award for Best Novel. No amount of literary accomplishment changes the fact that she considered Swamp Shark an awesome movie. The word "cherry" makes Seanan think of Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market." Come buy, come buy...
Back to Table of Contents
