Bewildering Stories welcomes...

Monica Nickolai

Monica is a multimedia artist with an MFA in Writing from the Art Institute of Chicago. Her artwork hangs in prestigious collections, and her plays have been performed internationally. She has won awards for a novel in progress and a DVD.

The author describes “The Isle of the Shark-Dogs” as a fairy tale that mixes the syles of Grimm folktales and Jorge Borges. It calls into question the reality of fairy tales and the reader.

The story is indeed an exceedingly curious one. An unnamed woman is exiled for an unspecified crime to an island infested by carnivorous dogs. She can fend off the dogs only by tossing them bottles of beer. She kisses a “fairy boy” and is transported to an ethereal plane. Perhaps she returns to him and becomes a fairy, herself. Or maybe not.

The story does not call into question the reality of fairy tales, much less that of the reader, so much as it makes a sardonic commentary about the realism of poetic justice in both fiction and the real world.

Monica Nickolai’s bio sketch can be found here.

Welcome to Bewildering Stories, Monica. We hope to hear from you again soon and often!