It started with two people who used to work on the Revels with her, and I believe still help organize them although she's not living in the area to be involved any more, leading a sing-along of three songs. One was John Barleycorn, and one was the Riddle Song ("I gave my love a cherry," etc.), and... I can't remember the third. It was a poem set to music, but not one I knew. Pretty, though, and easy to pick up on and sing along with.
The title of the talk was "Unriddling the World: fantasy and children," and she talked about metaphors for the world and for growing up, and how they can be explored through fantasy. And about the differences between fantasy that's in a world created entirely from scratch and fantasy that's in a version of our world, and about how much of her writing (and many British authors' writing, she said) is deeply rooted in place. She said that she loved, say, the American Southwest, but she could never write a book set there, because it wasn't hers to write about. And she talked about some of her writing process -- sitting down to write a children's adventure story for a contest, for example, and realizing midway through that one of her main characters was Merlin, and going "Oh, of course!" -- and about some of the trends of her writing, like nearly always having the viewpoint character be a pre-pubescent kid. (There were some very diplomatic digs at the movie, to the expected audience reaction, but she didn't mention it much. She did say how one thing she loved was the reaction she got from so many twenty-somethings on the internet, who had grown up on her books and were now fiercely protective of them, and how incredibly heartening it was to hear that. I caught several people grinning in the audience besides me.)
And... I am forgetting some of the other details, so I think I will have to listen to the radio broadcast too, if I can. But that is the summary version.
It started with two people who used to work on the Revels with her, and I believe still help organize them although she's not living in the area to be involved any more, leading a sing-along of three songs. One was John Barleycorn, and one was the Riddle Song ("I gave my love a cherry," etc.), and... I can't remember the third. It was a poem set to music, but not one I knew. Pretty, though, and easy to pick up on and sing along with.
The title of the talk was "Unriddling the World: fantasy and children," and she talked about metaphors for the world and for growing up, and how they can be explored through fantasy. And about the differences between fantasy that's in a world created entirely from scratch and fantasy that's in a version of our world, and about how much of her writing (and many British authors' writing, she said) is deeply rooted in place. She said that she loved, say, the American Southwest, but she could never write a book set there, because it wasn't hers to write about. And she talked about some of her writing process -- sitting down to write a children's adventure story for a contest, for example, and realizing midway through that one of her main characters was Merlin, and going "Oh, of course!" -- and about some of the trends of her writing, like nearly always having the viewpoint character be a pre-pubescent kid. (There were some very diplomatic digs at the movie, to the expected audience reaction, but she didn't mention it much. She did say how one thing she loved was the reaction she got from so many twenty-somethings on the internet, who had grown up on her books and were now fiercely protective of them, and how incredibly heartening it was to hear that. I caught several people grinning in the audience besides me.)
And... I am forgetting some of the other details, so I think I will have to listen to the radio broadcast too, if I can. But that is the summary version.
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