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Power and Reality in the Midst of Fantasy: A Conversation with Novelist Kelly Braffet
The conversation you hear in Episode 5 of KnotWork Storytelling is a conversation between two writers who love stories, the power of story in capital S sort of way, and tend to think deeply (overthink?) just about everything.
But really, what would they teach in the college seminar about your life’s work?
This was one of the “not exactly serious, but maybe” questions we pondered when novelist Kelly Braffet and I sat down for the latest episode of KnotWork Storytelling.
Kelly is a fabulously talented writer and a damn good baker. Everyone who has picked up a copy of her latest book The Broken Tower, its prequel The Unwilling, or her previous novels knows the former statement is true. As a recipient of one of her holiday cookie packages, my family and I can attest to the latter.
The conversation you hear in “Power and Reality in the Midst of Fantasy” is a chat between friends. It’s also a conversation between two writers who love stories, the power of story in capital S sort of way, and tend to think deeply (overthink?) just about everything.
A Pandemic Novel that Never Mentions Viruses or Masks
When you pick up The Broken Tower, I think you immediately realize it’s a pandemic novel, even though no one in this story world would understand virology or the sense of insecurity that comes with empty grocery store shelves. (They’d know that many diseases are deadly and some healers can help, though their powers tend to come at a price. And those who never worried about food supply never shopped for it and those who have worried about where their next meal is coming from couldn’t imagine the abundance of even the “emptiest” modern supermarket.)
So many of the hardest feelings we all came to know too well are part of these character’s everyday conversations:
”Why is everything horrible?” Ida said, and Korsa was shocked to see that her eyes were filled with tears. “The orphan house was horrible. The streets are horrible. This entire place is horrible, except for us. What's the point of living? So we can experience more horribleness?”
“The point is, Korsa said gently, “ to try to make it less horrible.”
Kelly’s response when I read this deeply difficult but immensely true passage was: “Oh, that is so pandemic.”
And yet, somehow, this book in which horrible things happen to people (none of whom are totally good or totally bad) is comforting somehow. Fiction has a way of doing that, of course.
Tune into our conversation and read The Broken Tower
Themes of “power” (not just the magical sort), and how this is central to all of Kelly’s work
The dual meaning of “Work,” which describes the magic in this world and the factories that make the book “a capitalist dystopia”
The question of whose stories get told and feeling haunted by all the people whose stories were never told
The conscious inclusion of differently abled people as well as well as folks across gender identities and sexualities
The question “who am I writing for” and how the author’s choices can hurt certain readers, particularly those with marginalized identities.
Why Kelly chose to create a mythic world that does not replicate our own
More About Kelly Braffet
Kelly Braffet is the author of the Border Lands novels, including The Broken Tower and The Unwilling, as well as the novels Save Yourself, Josie and Jack and Last Seen Leaving. Her writing has been published in The Fairy Tale Review, Post Road, and several anthologies. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University and currently lives in upstate New York with her husband, the author Owen King.
The Selkie, the Seal Woman of Irish Legend, and You
Do you know the story of the selkie, the seal who transforms into a woman and lives on shore for a time?
Do you know the story of the selkie, the seal who transforms into a woman and lives on shore for a time?
She doesn’t choose this terrestrial life. In fact, she’s tricked into it in a cruel way. She is offered a kind of love and safety and is convinced to stay. The selkie decides she can compromise her freedom and marry a fisherman, at least for a little while.
And then, she gets swallowed up by this landlocked life. She is consumed by the expectations and responsibilities. She finds herself at the heart of a family, caught in the nets of a husband and children who depend on her for their comfort, routine, and perhaps their sense of identity, too.
But, in the midst of this family, she’s barely able to survive. The selkie is a husk of her former self, and she has no more to give. If she stays in this world as it is, she’ll die. If she leaves, the world says that those who depend on her will suffer something even worse.
Have you ever spied the selkie within you, your skin parched, your heart aching for your sisters and the sea?
Has your soul cried, “Yes, that’s me!” as you’ve considered the story of a wild creature who lost herself to the structures and shoulds of family and a “civilized life”?
The Mythology of the Shape-Shifters
Across cultures, we find stories of shape-shifters.
There are the werewolves, the children who become swans, the old witches who become hares… It’s the story of the Irish selkie, the seal woman, that wraps round my heart and feels the most real for me.
The selkie, and the fairy woman she becomes for a time, has appeared in well-known modern stories, including the gorgeous Irish films The Secret of Roan Inish and The Song of the Sea. You’ve likely heard the selkie story in one form or another, even if you don’t know the word, perhaps as a mermaid tale. You know the inversion of the story from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, which flips the script so the heroine longs to be shacked up on land and suffers a sense of alienation and dislocation in her own ocean.
In Episode 4 of KnotWork Storytelling, Jen Murphy comes to tell the tale of her own neighborhood selkies. Jen lives in Skerries in County Dublin and watches the Irish Sea from her home. Their harbor is home to colonies of seals, and inspires her version of this timeless story.
The selkie felt stifled and trapped in that fisherman’s cottage, but she also felt a bone-deep loneliness. As you’ll hear in the conversation that follows Jen’s story, I uncovered an old memory in the midst of our dialog, and long forgotten tears returned to the surface.
As mythologist and author Sharon Blackie says when she tells her own version of the Selkie story, “these shapeshifing stories tap into a longing we often don’t even know we have and we feel that very deeply as sorrow.”
When we give ourselves full permission to feel the pull of the currents of the selkie story, we recover necessary parts of ourselves. You may know this cry deep in your heart. Or, it may be hard to reckon with the voice within that whispers, “This. This life. It’s a blessing. But sometimes… it’s a trap.”
Find a place where you can either snuggle in or root into the wildest part of nature where you can feel at home and tune into The Skerries Selkie.
I’m so excited to hear about what comes through for you when you seek out the selkie within you. Tell me more on Instagram or on in our Facebook community.
Do Ancient Stories Mean More To Us than Modern Life’s Luxuries?
Oh, the irony of launching KnotWork Storytelling when the power is out due to a winter storm!
Plus, Episode 3 featuring Maura MacMahon telling the tale of the 17th century Irish noblewoman, Máire Rua O'Brien.
The irony of launching a podcast when your power and internet are down is as deafening as a gas-powered generator.
This weekend, I continued to recite the new podcaster’s creed “please listen and subscribe to my new show, KnotWork Storytelling” while the power was out all over the Hudson Valley, and along much of the east coast.
As we waited for the electricity and WiFi to return, I wrangled with the strangeness of pouring so much time and passion into retelling ancient stories on a modern medium that is much more fragile than we care to imagine.
But then, we always create at the crossroads of disruption and daily life, don’t we?
Paradox is a key ingredient in the mix of modern existence.
And, if we’re aware of it, we can use those paradoxes to our creative advantage.
We were fortunate and made it through the “Great Icing of 2022” with only a twenty-four hour power outage. According to NPR, residents in twenty-five states were affected by this weather front, and many fared far worse than we did. I’m deeply grateful for a partner who is prepared for anything and for good friends with whom we could ride out the storm.
The Mystery of Finding Comfort in the Midst of Catastrophe
On Saturday, after the skies cleared and the sun streamed through the ice-laden branches, we popped champagne, devoured take-out, and shared ice cream cake. We had a birthday and a creative milestone to celebrate. For a little while, we were carefree. Underneath, we were conscious of how the luxuries of modernity and friendship wrapped around us the way dangerous layers of ice wrapped around the outer world.
As with all of the joys of life right now, this gathering felt decadent, necessary, impossible, and well-deserved.
Has life always been this paradoxical?
Have delight, pleasure, and connection always taken place against a vast, frozen “out there” where the night is dangerous and lonely?
Of course they have.
These days, we know that the divisions between the “haves” and “have nots” isn’t an accident of destiny or the will of the gods. It’s got everything to do with institutional racism, classism, colonialism, sexism, and the structures inherent to the capitalist patriarchy.
It can be hard to have those conversations though. Those words can get stuck in the throat when everyone is supposed to be having a good time. Folks don’t want to bring down the mood by welcoming the worries and the inequities through the door. (I am grateful for friends who will “go there” with me, because any party at my house is bound to include several book recommendations, an eclectic playlist, and a curse upon myriad forms of social injustice).
But, of course, this resistance to hard conversations is why we have stories. Stories help us explore the difficult emotional and intellectual territory that can be too hard to explore in its raw contemporary form.
What If Stories of the Past Are More Familiar than Many of Modern Life’s Luxuries?
Back to the paradox I began with: the strangeness of launching a project about ancient mythology and folklore on a purely digital platform while marooned atop an icy hill with minimal access to the online realms.
As I’ve dedicated myself to the idea that ancient stories are medicine for our modern maladies, I have worried that I am looking in the wrong direction. Am I slipping into nostalgia when I should be finding ways to root into the present moment? Shouldn’t I use my skills and creativity to contribute to solutions to the problems that plague the future rather than lavishing all that attention on imagining the past?
I keeping asking myself whether I am burying my head in the “good old days” of my long ago academic career and the fantasy realms we call the Celtic world.
That inner conflict is largely resolved after this weekend.
When we couldn’t heat our homes or power our lives as usual, friends gathered together. We let the kids run wild as the adults raised a glass. We laughed and we lingered. We discussed the state of the environment, culture, and society. We made room for some tears when the difficult, intimate stuff came up. We listened. We created our own warmth and light on that long, dark night.
Our lives are ruled by the towers, satellites, and transoceanic cables that make up our global web of electricity and information. Very few of us actually understand how those work, however. (That well-prepared husband of mine, an electrical engineer, is an exception).
Mostly, we only think about how the tech stuff works when it doesn’t.
Digital creatures that we may be, we are actually a lot more like our ancestors from hundreds and thousands of years ago than we realize.
We might panic about getting through one night without central heating in a way that would make our foremothers and forefathers scoff, but the stuff we know in our bones–the importance of nourishment, companionship, and a powerful story–is a lot more immediate and intimate than our knowledge of electrons, waves, and particles.
Even though we’re 21st century creatures, we could connect in the most human and important way without any of the modern trappings of life.
When you look at it through this lens, really, what do you understand more readily: the innovations that makes our cellphones and power grids function or the experience of a 17th century Irish woman who lost her greatest love and then found a way to keep her home and children safe?
On the KnotWork Storytelling Podcast: A Most Ferocious Lady of the Castle
The newest episode of KnotWork Storytelling offers you the story of Máire Rua MacMahon O’Brien, an Irish noblewoman who was known for pushing at least one of her many husbands from the roof of her County Clare castle.
There is so much more to this story, of course, and my friend, the brilliant storyteller Maura McMahon, illuminates the nuances of this story in Episode 3 of our show. This woman’s story is really about love, loss, survival, and sovereignty. (And if there was a murder or two thrown into the mix, well, that part of the reason we’re still so fascinated with this story four hundred years later.)
I hope that you have access to all the modern conveniences to listen to this episode now.
My deeper prayer? You have good friends with whom to share it.
Brigid: Goddess, Saint, and the First Heroine You'll Meet in the KnotWork Storytelling Podcast
In Episode 1 of KnotWork Storytelling, Conspiring with Brigit, Kate tells two stories of Ireland’s matron goddess and saint.
Brigit, with all her guises (goddess, saint, a sacred Celtic blend of the two).
Brigit, with all her spellings (maybe she’s Brigid, or Bridget, or Bríd?).
Brigit, with all her power (fire, healing, hospitality, poetry, beer, smithcraft… and that’s just the short list).
With all her names, faces, and skills she has spoken to the soul of the individual and the collective for millennia.
Throughout my life, Brigid has been my soul’s guide. The first time I heard her name, I felt like I had found a companion, but it was only when I sat down with Kate Chadbourne for the first episode of my new podcast, KnotWork Storytelling that I fully connected with the idea, “Brigid is a friend.”
In Episode 1 of KnotWork Storytelling, Conspiring with Brigit, Kate tells two stories of Ireland’s matron goddess and saint.
A Story of Friendship: When Brigit and Mary were BFFs
Now, everyone knows that Mary and Jesus lived in Ireland for a time, right?
A cozy cottage with Brigit in the midst of a long Irish winter sounds like the perfect place to recover from childbirth. Brigit, after all, is the saint one calls upon for all matters of fertility, pregnancy, and birth.
At the start of February, when it was time for Mary to return to mass, to be “churched” after Jesus’s arrival, Mary didn’t want to be the center of attention. Brigit, always a mother of invention, had a solution.
Listen to the entire episode to hear the story of Brigit’s “flaming headdress” and how a grateful Mary decided that Brigit’s Day (February 1) would always be celebrated before her own feast on Candlemas (February 2).
A Story of Resourcefulness and Kindness: When Brigit Saves a Fox and Outfoxes a King
A woodcutter killed a fox in defense of his chickens. Unfortunately, that fox was a favorite of the king. The king was heartbroken and threatened the woodcutter with death.
Brigit, in her goddess form, riding in her great chariot, hears the laments of the woodcutter’s daughters and offers her aid. This is a tale of power, both the foolish and the compassionate kind.
Is Brigid a Goddess or a Saint?
Brigid, of course, is both.
Irish and Scottish folklore are rich with tales of Brigid. Our greatest source for her stories, including what we know of Brigid as a goddess, are the weird, wild, and wonderful stories recorded by the Church in various volumes called the “Lives of Saint Brigit.”
These stories offer us the entire tapestry of Brigit’s traditions: Brigit as goddess, as saint, who we know through hagiography, and through the oral tradition.
As Kate says, “If it sparks you, it belongs to you…. Stories are deeper than bloodlines.”
What is KnotWork Storytelling?
On this new podcast, we’re on a mission to untangle our myths and reweave our stories.
In each KnotWork Storytelling episode, you’ll hear a story from mythology, folklore, or history. Then, my guest and I will explore why these ideas and characters still resonate today.
I’m your host, Marisa Goudy. I created this show because I’m so passionate about Irish folklore, Celtic mythology, and heroines’ tales from around the world.
We'll explore sacred stories and traditions from around the world, particularly Ireland and the region known as "the Celtic fringe." Join us as we wander through these ancient storylines as we set out on a quest to learn from the past, better understand the present, and craft a sustainable future.
Every episode reminds us that ancient stories are medicine for our ancient maladies.
Fáilte: Welcome to the KnotWork Storytelling Podcast
Welcome to the KnotWork Storytelling Podcast. This is the show where we untangle our myths and reweave our stories, one ancient tale at a time.
On my new podcast, KnotWork Storytelling Podcast, we’re on a mission to untangle our myths and reweave our stories.
I started this show because I know in my bones that mythology is medicine for our modern maladies. We use the ancient stories to understand our lives all the time. Thing is, we usually just aren’t aware of it.
Let’s start here, with storytelling, because everyone has a relationship to storytelling, even if they think they left that stuff behind or that storytelling is “mere” entertainment.
Here’s one way for me to tell my story of story
I grew up on Disney movies, classic novels that every American girl “should” read, and the best (and worst) of 1980s and 90s TV. I grew up on my mom’s stories of both the terrible and the beautiful nuns at parochial school, and my dad’s stories of riding his bike across town to football practice. I grew up on stories from my French Canadian grandmother and my Irish and Scottish grandfather, but they talked about long Canadian winters on the Miramichi River in New Brunswick, not the ancient stories their ancestors might have brought from Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
We’re all made of stories, the stories that create us in childhood and those we find, and those that find us, along the way through adulthood.
In my early teens, the folklore and mythology of Ireland found me. Call it passion or obsession, the words, spirit, and land of the Celtic world swept me up and made me feel like I was home… even when I was a high school kid on Cape Cod, Massachusetts doodling Celtic knots in the margins of my math book or a student at Boston College with a stack of history and poetry books and plays by Irish authors. I would go on to study at National University of Ireland in Galway and get my MA in Irish literature and drama from University College Dublin.
And then… I lost track of those Irish stories for a while. They were set in the background of an American life I never expected to have. That ticket to grad school was supposed to be one-way and take me all the way to a PhD and a professorship, but we never can predict how each chapter will end. Or where we’ll be when the next one begins.
Of course, stories were always part of my life. We are a culture made of stories, whether it’s the latest show everyone’s binging, or a conversation that begins, “Oh my goddess, did I tell you what happened???”
Put simply, stories are essential to us. They are the essence of who we are. And that is why I have created KnotWork Storytelling. Each episode opens with an ancient story from mythology, history, or folklore and is followed by a conversation about why these themes still resonate in the heart and spark our imagination today.
This first season will span at least 13 episodes.
You’ll hear many stories from Ireland because those stories are dear to me and are closest to my expertise, but my guests are bringing tales from their own traditions and ancestral lineages. In future seasons, I hope to cast our story net further and further and call in storytellers, characters and plots from around the globe.
All of the tales you’ll hear on KnotWork Storytelling are original in that either myself or my guest is offering their own version of a story that might be centuries or millennia old. I’ve written many of the stories you’ll hear and I consider it an act of re-mythologizing to tell the stories of Irish goddesses like Macha, Mongfind, and the Cailleach. I work to balance the material from the original manuscripts and the tales collected by folklorists with the modern sensibilities that really make these stories come alive.
Some of my guests are sharing their own written stories and I’ve asked them to source their retellings not just from their own mythic imaginations, but from the original sources as well. A few of my guests are brilliant oral storytellers. I hope you’ll tune into episode one, Conspiring With Brigit and Episode three, A Most Ferocious Lady of the Castle, which each open with some fabulous performances.
Occasionally, I’ll welcome an author who has created their own new story, but I can guarantee we’ll be exploring how the novels of today are influenced by those ancient origin legends, heroes’ journeys, and heroines’ tales of old.
Each of these stories is fascinating in itself, and can transport us to another time with a different set of worries and a different set of values and ways to measure success.
But here’s the thing… the differences are often less striking than the similarities. Human nature and our need to connect with nature have not changed all that much over the course of recorded history. The themes and schemes, despair and passions that feature in these old stories prove to be relevant in countless ways. The conversations I have with my guests in the second half of each episode seek to explore the threads of meaning that tug at us most insistently.
And what’s the idea about knots and knotwork?
I’ve been working at the knots of life and story for a long time. My book, The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic really began that discussion publicly. Here’s something from the book:
We are creatures of curves and spirals, of circles and spheres.
We navigate the contradictory nature of our roles and goals, dreams and fears everyday.
We are a beautiful, intricate design. We are a terrible tangle.
We glow with the artistry of creation, even when we burn in the face of its chaos.
We are heroines. We are heroes. We are creative beings who have been put here to do so much more than survive. We are here to interpret the rich tapestry of the past and to pluck out the old tangles and bring old wrongs to right.
We are here to make sense of the threads we’ve wrapped around daily life, to discern what ensnares us and what holds us together.
We’re here to weave a future that’s more than just bearable. We’re here to live and craft new stories that are beautiful and bold, stories that weave together all the parts of ourselves that have been denied, all the people of the world who have been marginalized. And we’re here to recommit ourselves to the earth and to nature, to this great planet of ours that cares nothing for our words, but which depends very much on how we live out our stories.
Can stories heal the world? Well, stories can heal us. And only people who have healed the old wounds of this lifetime and who have paid heed to the wounds and triumphs of the ancestors who came before us are going to have a chance to do our part and make this world a better place.
I’m so excited that you’re entering the Knot with me. I hope these stories will challenge, console, and entertain you. I would love to hear what you think of the stories we tell on the show and how they resonate with the story you are living, healing, and telling right now.
Do find us on Instagram and Facebook and do spread the word about KnotWork Storytelling.
The further we cast our nets of story, the stronger the fabric of life will be.