Sea Girl

In legends spanning China to Canada, Sea Girl lays out a new mythology in which women and girls prove they’re more than capable of saving the day. The feminist folktales collected in Sea Girl upend any notion that women are doomed to be sentimental, meek, or submissive. In these classic tales, heroines unflinchingly wade monstrous rivers, escape ogres' nests, and outsmart desperate sharks and hungry tigers. And while defending their families and villages, they always determine their own fate. Feminist Folktales is a four-volume series of folklore showcasing traditional stories from around the world with courageous and heroic girls at the center of every tale. Often having existed only as oral histories, Ethel Johnston Phelps collected and anthologized these tales into two volumes, Tatterhood and The Maid of the North. This series features Phelps’s stories set against new illustrations, with introductions reflecting the enduring cultural significance of these folktales in the present day.

Ethel Johnston Phelps (1914-1984) held a master's degree in medieval literature, coedited a Ricardian journal, and published several articles on fifteenth-century subjects. She compiled two anthologies of feminist folktales from around the world, Tatterhood and The Maid of the North. Daniel José Older is the author of Shadowshaper and the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series. Publishers Weekly hailed him as a "rising star of the genre" after the publication of his debut ghost noir collection, Salsa Nocturna. He coedited the anthology Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History and guest edited the music issue of Crossed Genres. His short stories and essays have appeared in Tor.com, BuzzFeed, Strange Horizons, and others, and the anthologies Subversion and Mothership: Tales Of Afrofuturism And Beyond. Suki Boynton is an artist, illustrator, and the senior graphic designer at the Feminist Press. She is a graduate of Connecticut College with a BA in art history and has a degree in graphic design from the Art Institute of Charleston, SC. She currently lives in Newark, NJ.

Introduction by [to be determined] Preface by Ethel Johnston Phelps THE MAID OF THE NORTH A Finnish Tale from the Kalevala FAIR EXCHANGE A Celtic Tale WILD GOOSE LAKE A Chinese Tale GAWAIN AND THE LADY RAGNELL An English Tale THE MONKEY's HEART An African Tale THE TWELVE HUNTSMEN A German Tale THE TIGER AND THE JACKAL A Punjab Tale EAST OF THE SUN, WEST OF THE MOON A Norwegian Tale THE GIANT's DAUGHTER A Scandinavian Tale HOW THE SUMMER QUEEN CAME TO CANADA A Canadian Indian Tale SUGGESTED READING