In keeping with our anthropomorphic theme this year, our guest of Honour is the writer Anne Louise Avery, whose animal tales (and her Reynard the Fox books) are much loved by readers across the world who follow her Twitter and Patreon accounts.
Anne Louise Avery is a writer and art historian, who lives in Oxford, England.
She studied art history, archaeology and Japanese at SOAS in London, ICU University in Tokyo, and Brown University in Rhode Island. An expert on the American artist Edward Mitchell Bannister (ca. 1828-1901) – her academic life feeds closely into her writing.
She writes widely across different mediums – last year being commissioned to write a short story for the perfume company, Penhaligon’s and a podcast for Sony. She also won the first Fortnum & Mason short story competition.
Her recent books have been Reynard the Fox and A Fox for All Seasons, both published by the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.
But Anne Louise Avery, as @AnneLouiseAvery, is also the author of wonderful short vignettes that appear on Twitter, building up a daily picture of the lives of a group of animals (and humans) who inhabit various locations around Europe, with the centre of the tales being a quiet English village near the coast, the home of Old Fox, Wolf, Pine Marten, the Doctor, the Little Girl, the Little Girl’s Aunt and many more. The tales often involve glorious dishes and exotic delicacies from many lands.
Place and nature are both vital to her work, particularly the English countryside.
Her new book, coming soon, is Old Fox’s Cottage, set in Dorset at the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s and based on her Twitter and Patreon stories.
Her mother was the thriller writer, Anne Stevenson, and her father was a journalist, who also worked in Naval Intelligence with Graham Greene and Ian Fleming, who was a good friend.
Reviews of Reynard the Fox:
“Marvellously spirited and adroit storytelling” – Dame Marina Warner
“A tour de force of storytelling” – Wall Street Journal
Anne will be appearing twice at the Literary Festival at the Stump Theatre on Fungalmire:
Sunday April 23rd at 11am SLT – An interview with Saffia Widdershins
Monday 1st May at 11am SLT – Anne will be reading from her own works
Funglamire’ Old Fox and Friends Hunt
In addition, Dave OSaurus, the region builder of Fungalmire, has created a special Hunt across the Fungalmire Faireland. Amongst the different giant fungi (or are we shrunken to the size of ants?) you can discover tree stumps carved with images of the animals to be met in Anne’s wonderful Old Fox Tales. Clicking on a tree stump will win you the prize of one of Anne’s short stories … and a gift from Dave too!
Fantasy Faire 