Hidden Gems: LR author Jen Fawkes tells 'Tales' from the other side of villainy

In her latest collection of short stories, "Tales the Devil Told Me," Little Rock author Jen Fawkes offers new perspective on some old villains.

Fawkes, through her gleefully twisted lens, has reimagined these particular rogues and given them new life, new dimensions and possibilities. The result is a fantastically entertaining group of 12 stories that range from violent to hilarious, clever to poignant.

Here's Captain James Hook, no longer a scalawag pirate hunting down Peter Pan, but a well-liked suburban postman who is happily married, is seeing a therapist and trying his best to be a good dad to his surly, teenage stepson -- who just happens to be named Peter(!) -- in "Never, Never."

Medusa wears a burlap sack over her head, tends bar, plays in a band called the Gorgons and is going out with a plastic surgeon in the drolly titled "As You Can Imagine, This Makes Dating Difficult." In "Tiny Bones" we learn of the traumatic childhood that formed the witch from "Hansel and Gretel," and Moby Dick sends a poetic, tender letter to a special someone in "Dear Ahab."

The opening story, "Demerol, Demerol, Benzedrine, Schnapps," is a bloody, funny, heartbreaking update of "Rumpelstiltskin," complete with substance abuse issues, a lie about needing some gold spun out of straw for a king and the protagonist grasping onto the hope that caring for a human baby of his own will help him clean up his act.

At the heart of "Tales the Devil Told Me," which is out today from North Carolina publisher Press 53, is the novella-length "The Tragedie of Claudius, Prince of Denmark," in which Fawkes imagines Hamlet's scheming uncle in a more sympathetic light after all those years surrounded by the madness of his father and brother at Elsinore.

The book, which follows last year's excellent debut collection "Mannequin and Wife," is further proof that the 47-year-old Fawkes is a supremely gifted writer. She resurrects each of these characters with care, intelligence and an undeniable verve and confidence. A project like this could easily have turned clumsy in the hands of someone not as skilled, or show-offy from a less sensitive writer, but Fawkes sticks the landing each time.

And the cover, by Claire V. Foxx, is perfect.

Fawkes, the 2021 Porter Fund Literary Prize winner, didn't even start writing until she was 30. "Tales the Devil Told Me" was her MFA thesis at Hollins University in Roanoke, Va.

She was keen on the idea of how popular art from earlier eras got turned into higher art later, something she learned about as an undergrad from George Stade, professor emeritus of English literature at Columbia University, where she was also introduced to many of the original stories she would revisit in "Tales ... ."

"That idea really excited me," she says. "Years later, when I was in my MFA program and thinking about a thesis project, I had the idea of writing from the point of view of all the characters Odysseus encounters in 'The Odyssey.'"

That resulted in the violent but quirky "A Moment on the Lips," about the cyclops Polyphemus and the first story she wrote that would end up in "Tales the Devil Told Me."

Zachary Mason had already written a similar book, "The Lost Books of the Odyssey," though, so Fawkes changed her approach.

"I thought, what about looking at other popular villains," she says. "This could be really interesting, a book that is thematically linked where every story reimagines a quote-unquote form of popular fiction from the villain's perspective or someone close to the villain."

Bringing a different perspective to difficult characters is something she says she wants to explore more in her work.

"One of my long-term projects is humanizing characters that we see as villainous. I don't really believe in villains."

"Never, Never" was the second story she wrote for the collection. Unlike "A Moment on the Lips," which takes place in the world of the "Odyssey," she moved it to modern times with different characters. This comfort of moving between settings, periods and styles is one of Fawkes' strengths, something that was obvious in "Mannequin and Wife."

"I love variety in a book," she says. "I'm not a big fan of stories that are all the same. I thought that if I could pull this off, maybe I could give each one its own special tweak so that hopefully readers will get the references, and if they don't know the references, the stories will still be enjoyable as standalone stories."

"Hidden Gems" is a column about new books that runs in rotation with "Local Flavors," recipes from our own regional celebrity cooks, and "My Favorite Things," a look at our readers' sanctuaries and collections. If you'd like to see someone featured in this space, email [email protected].