Even Grimmer Tales

Adult fairy tales – not for the faint-hearted, indeed!

Valerie Volk has transported and adapted many of the classic Brothers Grimm tales into a modern context, demonstrating that the "real" can sometimes be more bizarre and horrific than the imaginary.

With witty prose pieces to set the scene and Leszek Hermanowicz's clever drawings to enhance the mood, each poem becomes a tour de force, demonstrating how these tales still have relevance today.

The Brothers would certainly approve!

Valerie Volk has always been a closet writer, starting as a seven year old with a collection of embarrassingly bad fairy stories. In the intervening decades as a student, teacher, lecturer, examiner, researcher, education program director, wife, mother of four, and grandmother of six, writing has been a secret indulgence.

Now, in this new life as an author, she has published many poems, short stories, and two books: In Due Season, a collection of poems that won the national Omega Writers’ CALEB Poetry award in 2010, and A Promise of Peaches, a verse novel, in 2011. Her third book, Even Grimmer Tales, is a collection of twisted adaptations of the already dark tales of the Brothers Grimm, and her fourth book is nearing completion.

In her lighter moments, she loves reading, film, theatre, travel, classical music, especially opera, jazz and people watching – a never-ending source of interest.