Author Interview: Re Gwaltney
What effect has folklore had on the way you see the world?
I’d like to say not much, as someone who was raised in a very fundamental Christian environment before deprogramming into paganism. But what are all those Christian stories if not folklore? I can’t count all the individual threads of stolen and adapted cultural stories that have made it into my life, and when you layer in the stories I learned later and am still learning, of will-o-the-wisps and Fair Folk and Ghosts of Appalachia, you get a sea of churning resources I sift through for my work.
If I were to dig down into the deepest parts of it, to me folklore has taught me to consider where permanence and impermanence kiss, where actions meet consequences, and where stories become illustrations of life beyond mere entertainment. A folk tale is a lesson, an explanation, and a shared understanding all in one. People connect over the wisdom in it. I will never not see the world through stories that make it just a little bit magical.
What was your favorite story growing up?
Cats.
HA! Nonono, although that’s a close second I could go into. My FAVORITE story of all time was Labyrinth, in which the sexy king that wants to marry you is a creep and all (or many) of the ugly things you meet along the way can be your allies with a little kindness. In which standing in front of a force far more powerful than you and saying ‘no’ is the most powerful magic of all. In which you overcome your flaws not by breaking down and hating yourself, but by gaining confidence and community that just make those other things less important.
The music is good, too.
Do you see folklore as resistance, and if so, to what?
I’m not sure you can read my story and see it any other way. Stories that we share with each other build community. Building community is resistance. Being interconnected, interdependent, and sharing what we know and have with each other in love is survival. Where the story is a way to have fun, to learn a lesson, to build hope, or to grief, it is so distinctly human that it sparks the humanity in us.
Disney stories may have forgotten the humanity in their roots, but the rest of us know where to look for it.
What are popular stories lacking today?
It’s really rough to generalize. I read and watch so many stories that have everything in them I’m about to complain isn’t there, fair warning. But I think that mainstream and traditional industry sides of storytelling, at least in the US/Western mainstream, is forgetting its humanity in all the sales and marketing.
Instead of focusing on stories that make meaning and connect people through emotion, they emphasize tropes that are easily named, buzzwords, demographics and arcs that have sold well in the past, structures and styles that are so often used that it takes no thought or engagement to follow along. Many books and shows these days slip in and out of our lives soullessly, leaving no impression beyond a couple gimmicky moments. Mindless fun is wonderful sometimes, but I feel as though certain parts of the market are having the creativity bleached out of them.
What do you hope readers get from your piece?
Well on the most obvious level, I hope people get the idea of ‘censoring is bad’. Books and art carry so much of our human identity in them that when we destroy it, we’re destroying ourselves. But it goes deeper. I want readers to see the strong, hard hearts and realize survival is not a good enough reason to become a monster. See how the book keeper stands in the doorway alone, even afraid, as the last wall between fear and wisdom. See how being brave and crafty can deflect catastrophe moment by moment.
I want the end to really resonate, that what she is really protecting are the stories, the histories, the tales of magic and love and softness that you can’t learn to craft from. When she’s met with a person so beaten down they’ll soon be gone, these are the books that save a life. The holding of these stories are how they live again, how they love each other, and how they hope.
Tell us a little about yourself as a writer:
Yes! Hello. I am, first and foremost, very scared.
That is, there are things in life that are very, very scary, that I don’t understand, or that I do understand and just sit there in my head, blotting out the sun, reminding me how hard things are. I can only clear my sky if I weave them into stories. It’s my way of processing and accepting all the hard truths out there. Because of this, I’m not sure I’ll ever write a story that doesn’t involve dark and difficult things. But I don’t see it as edgy, so much. I see it as survival.
I am femme, nonbinary, queer, disabled, pagan, and autistic. There are a lot of things in me that don’t fit, and there isn’t a lot of written work out there than doesn’t paint me in some way as other and ugly—especially for being disabled. No matter what I write, I want it to welcome people like me to the table. I see you.
If you were a cryptid or folkloric creature, which one would you be and why?
When I looked at this question, I immediately went to my husband and asked him what I would be. I was incredibly sure that he would call me a Gremlin (because of my generally chaotic nature and propensity to bite loved ones). It turns out, he has decided that I am a pixie! In his words: “You have a childishly exuberate energy, and you’re very prone to going straight from energetic and excited to serious or sleepy in one second flat. Very mercurial and trickstery, and you feel emotions so powerfully. It just fits.”
Can’t argue with that.
You’re a forest-dwelling hag and you find an intruder in your garden. What symbolic plant, animal, or object are you turning them into and why?
There are not many plants or animals I would turn someone into and trust they wouldn’t turn around and spite me somehow. Can you imagine an angry person in the form of a goat? Chaos. I also don’t think I’d turn them into any object that deals in electricity or fire, because you do not want a sentient or cursed object that can start a forest fire. I can see myself hovering over this poor intruder menacingly while I get caught up in decisions, decisions. They might sneak away while I’m doing so.
But maybe…? That’s on purpose? Now they’re just glad they got away safe. If they come a second time, I’ll turn them into a butterfly.
If monsters are a manifestation of a society’s fears, what monsters exist in our modern folklore and why?
This is an endless answer, but I’ll give you my top three. I’ve seen them several times in recent years. The first is the harmless monster. It’s the scary thing that turns out to be a victim of the larger danger. This is your Ju-on The Grudge that comes as a warning or the ghosts in Mike Flanagan’s Haunting of Hill House. Then there’s the monster that hurts you out of a desperate cycle, trying to free itself from pain by inflicting it. This is the hand from Talk to Me, where the ghosts are fleeing the oppressive nothingness they otherwise endure. Finally, the monster that smiles at you. The illusion of kindness that just barely veils the evil enough that no one else will pay attention to it.
Read Re's short story "This Book Holds Us" in our first issue, launching August 22nd!
[originally posted to Patreon on 26/7/25]
