Tuesday Toot is a semi-regular feature here at The Word. An invite-only series of short posts where writers, editors, booksellers and other creatives have been asked to share their stuff and toot their own horn. It’s hard to be seen in the digital morass and hopefully this occasional segment will help some of the quality stuff out there get noticed. It should all be things that readers of The Word will find edifying.
Today, it’s Kate Forsyth.
Who is Kate?
Kate Forsyth is the bestselling and award-winning author of 25 books for children and adults, translated into 10 languages.
Since The Witches of Eileanan was named a Best First Novel by Locus Magazine, Kate has won or been nominated for many awards, including a CYBIL Award in the US. She’s also the only author to win five Aurealis awards in a single year, for her Chain of Charms series which tells of the adventures of two Romany children in the time of the English Civil War. Book 5: The Lightning Bolt was also a CBCA Notable Book.
Her latest book for adults, Bitter Greens, interweaves a retelling of the Rapunzel fairytale with the scandalous life story of one of its first tellers, the 17th century French writer Charlotte-Rose de la Force.
Her latest book for children is The Starkin’s Curse, a tale of high adventure, wild magic and true love, set in the same world as her bestselling novels The Starthorn Tree and The Wildkin’s Curse.
Kate is a direct descendant of Charlotte Waring, the author of the first book for children ever published in Australia, A Mother’s Offering to her Children. She is also studying a doctorate in fairytale retellings at UTS. You can read more about her at www.kateforsyth.com.au
What are you tooting about?
Bitter Greens
Charlotte-Rose de la Force has been banished from the court of Versailles by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. She is comforted by an old nun, Sœur Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens …
After Margherita’s father steals a handful of parsley, wintercress and rapunzel from the walled garden of the courtesan, Selena Leonelli, he is threatened with having both hands cut off … unless he and his wife give away their little girl.
Selena is the famous red-haired muse of the artist Tiziano, first painted by him in 1513 and still inspiring him at the time of his death, sixty-one years later. Called La Strega Bella, Selena is at the centre of Renaissance life in Venice, a world of beauty and danger, seduction and betrayal, love and superstition.
Locked away in a tower, growing to womanhood, Margherita sings in the hope someone will hear her. One day, a young man does …
Three women, three lives, three stories, braided together to create a compelling story of desire, obsession, black magic, and the redemptive power of love.
BITTER GREENS will be published APRIL 2012.
“History and fairytale are richly entwined in this spellbinding story. Compulsively unputdownable!” – Juliet Marillier, author of ‘Daughter of the Forest’.
“A must read for lovers of historical fiction. Philippa Gregory watch out!” – Pamela Freeman, winner of the 2006 NSW History Prize.
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