PAMELA DITCHOFF

One day Pamela Ditchoff sat down to answer the age-old question of what happened to those famous fairy tale princesses after "Happily Ever After”. In her third novel, Mrs. Beast, award-winning writer Pamela Ditchoff unveils an enchantingly dark, but humorous and enlightened story about what became of the great fairy tale beauties after they said "I Do”.

Mrs. Beast begins with Beauty, who shortly after marrying the Prince realized she preferred her loving Beast to the vain and eccentric Prince. Leaving the comforts of the castle behind, she embarks on a quest to find Elora, the enchantress who changed the beast into a Prince, and convince her to change him back into the Beast. Her quest takes her through Grimm Land, a place where angst clings and spreads like lichen, and where she meets Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella and learns what became of them after they married their princes. Snow White lives in a commune deep in the woods with the seven dwarfs, their seven wives and many children. Rapunzel lives in the low end of Storyendburg and makes her living on the streets. Sleeping Beauty is an opium addict living in the Kingdom of Dreams, and Cinderella hides behind a veil refusing to accept the toll aging has taken. Ms. Ditchoff turns fairy tale beauty inside out and invites the reader to do the same in this delicious twist on these fairy tale classics.

Stewart O'Nan, author of Snow Angels, said: "Mrs. Beast riffs on the story of Beauty and the Beast in a funky, contemporary way, much like Anne Sexton's Transformations took on the fairy tale, or John Gardner in his children's books. Pamela is a writer of great talent, ambition, and accomplishment."

In September 2010, Pamela Ditchoff's fourth novel, Princess Beast, was published by Stay Thirsty Press. Princess Beast is the sequel to Mrs. Beast and is a deliciously dark and subversive fairy tale that fans of Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood will surely savour.

Pamela Ditchoff is the author of two earlier novels, Seven Days & Seven Sins, Shaye Areheart Books at Random, 2003, and The Mirror of Monsters and Prodigies, Coffee House Press, 1995. She won the Chicago Review Award for Fiction and she is the recipient of a John Ciardi Scholarship at the Bread Loaf Writing Conference, and The Walter Dakin Fellowship at the Sewanee Writer's Conference. Ms. Ditchoff holds a Master's Degree in English/Creative Writing from Michigan State University and lives in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Links:

Thirsty : 2014 Summer : Pamela Ditchoff on Without Blood by Alessandro Baricco
Thirsty : 2014 Spring : Pamela Ditchoff on Gone to an Aunt's by Anne Petrie
Thirsty : 2013 Spring : Pamela Ditchoff on Peel My Love Like An Onion
Thirsty : 2013 March : From Suetonius to Bolaño – What Our Authors Are Reading - March 2013
Thirsty : 2011 October : Sometimes They Run In The Fog - A Ghost Story from Nova Scotia
Thirsty : 2011 July : The Extended Life of eBooks
Thirsty : 2010 October : Princess Beast, a novel by Pamela Ditchoff
Thirsty : 2009 April : Thirsty features Mrs. Beast by Pamela Ditchoff
Thirsty : 2009 May : Interview with Pamela Ditchoff
Pamela Ditchoff's Profile on Wikipedia