Claudia Riiff Finseth

Silence.  It’s in silence that I can hear the quiet voice of the story, imagine worlds and characters, and come to love them as if they were real.  Maybe they are!

I especially love the quiet in sun-slanting forests, in the clouds  of the beach sky as they are reflected on wet sand,

The woods at Anam Cara

and in the far-reaching view from hill tops.  I also like the silence in my back yard and in my house.

This summer, in Ireland, I found a unique place to hear the voice of the story: Anam Cara Writers and Artists’ Retreat in the little, windswept village of Eyres, on the Beara Peninsula.  Sue Booth-Forbes calls herself a literary midwife, and the title is apt.  She provides a sweet house with lots of nooks and crannies, cooks nourishing food and even washes your clothes on Friday.  There are five acres to roam while moodling out stories, and your own room for writing them down.

So, fantasy.

In some ways all fiction is fantasy in the broadest sense of that word: that is, it is made up, it isn’t real.   But there is also a kind of writing that includes magic and magical beings, and that is the kind of fantasy I mean here.

Kilarney National Forest, Co. Kerry, Ireland

I am working on two fantasy novels, The Nithing and The Changeling Chronicles.  At least, that is their working titles.  In 2005 my fantasy story, “The Wimblestone,” appeared in Cricket Magazine.

I’ve also written essays and articles on the value of and some of the elements in fantasy stories.  Tolkien wrote the best and most important essay on fantasy, “On Faerie Stories.”   My short general essay on fantasy, published in the Tacoma News Tribune around the time J. K. Rawling’s Harry Potter books were being criticized by fundamentalist Christians as not fit for children, is “The Magic of Faerie Stories.”

I’ve also written about Tolkien’s work.  “Tolkien in Winter” is a short memoir first published in the Tacoma News Tribune.  “Tolkien’s Trees” is longer, more encompassing, and was published in Mallorn, The Journal of the Tolkien Society, in Great Britain.  I love Tolkien’s writing, and I love trees, and so did he, so how could I help but write that article?

My dear Swiss friend Susanne walking one of the beautiful strands on the Dingle Peninsula, Ireland

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