Elizabeth Hand: Wylding Hall

Yet it couldn’t have been him. Because he looked exactly the same as he did the last time I saw him, over forty years ago. He hadn’t aged a day. Neither of them had.

And he didn’t know me, even when I was shouting his name over and over again. Just stared through me like I wasn’t even there. And then he was gone.

[Fin]

There is a remarkable wealth of documentary material, written, recorded and filmed, online and in print, relating to the British Folk Revival, and I drew on much of it as research for this novel. I am particularly indebted to Rob Young’s Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music , an invaluable resource and the ideal starting point for anyone wishing to learn more.

While inspired in part by numerous real-life musicians and songwriters, the members of Windhollow Faire are all fictional, as is Wylding Hall itself.

My special thanks to:

My agent, Martha Millard, sole proprietor of the known world’s finest literary agency.

Betsy Mitchell of Open Road Media and Pete Crowther of PS Publishing, for easing this story into the world.

Sharyn November, who tirelessly read, reread, and commented on earlier versions of this book.

The staff at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House, London, for their assistance.

The Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida, for providing a residency during which an earlier version of this novel was written.

Farah Mendelsohn, for her insight and suggestions.

Bob Olson, for sharing his musical knowledge and enthusiasm, as well as stellar stereo equipment.

Greer Gilman, for her observations on the Watersons, especially Lal & Mike Waterson’s lost classic Bright Phoebus .

Callie Hand, for her suggestions and encouragement.

Most of all, my love and gratitude to John Clute.

Elizabeth Hand (b. 1957) is the award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy titles such as Winterlong, Waking the Moon, Black Light , and Glimmering , as well as the thrillers Generation Loss and Available Dark . She is commonly regarded as one of the most poetic writers working in speculative fiction and horror today.

Hand was born in San Diego and grew up in Yonkers and Pound Ridge, New York. During the height of the Cold War, she was exposed to constant air raid drills and firehouse sirens, giving her early practice in thinking about the apocalypse. She attended the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, where she received a BS in cultural anthropology.

Hand’s first love was writing, but many Broadway actors lived in her hometown of Pound Ridge, and by high school she was consumed with the theater. She wrote and acted in a number of plays in school and with a local troupe, The Hamlet Players. After college, writing stories became her primary interest, and the work of Angela Carter cemented that interest. Hand realized that she wanted to create new myths and retell old ones, using a heightened prose style.

Hand’s first break came in 1988 with the publication of Winterlong . In this novel, Hand explores the City of Trees, a post-apocalyptic Washington, DC. The story focuses on a psychically enhanced woman who can read dreams and her journey through the strange city with her courtesan twin brother. The book’s success led to two sequels: Aestival Tide and Icarus Descending . All three novels were nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award.

Beginning with the James Tiptree, Jr. Award — winning Waking the Moon , Hand wrote a succession of books involving themes of apocalypse, ancient deities, and mysticism. Waking the Moon centers on the Benandanti, an ancient secret society in modern-day Washington, DC. that also appeared in Black Light , a New York Times Notable Book.

In 1998, Hand released her short story collection Last Summer at Mars Hill . The title story won the Nebula Award and the World Fantasy Award. Most recently, she has published two crime novels focusing on punk rock photographer Cass Neary — the Shirley Jackson Award — winning Generation Loss (2007) and Available Dark (2012).

When Hand isn’t writing stories of decadence and deities, she divides her time between the coast of Maine and London, with her partner, UK critic John Clute. She is a regular contributor to numerous publications, including the Washington Post and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction .

Hand is the oldest of five siblings in a very close-knit family. This photo shows them in 1967, on one of their camping trips to Maine and Canada. All five kids, then under the age of ten, shared a canvas tent with their parents. From left to right: Brian, Patrick, Elizabeth, Kathleen, and baby Barbara. “Maine imprinted on me during this time, which is why I’ve lived there for the last twenty-five years,” Hand says.

Hand in her driveway with her beloved family dog Cindy shortly before leaving for college in Washington, DC. “Note the skirt, made from a pair of massively embroidered jeans; my favorite red velvet beret, which my mother gave me for Christmas and which disappeared under dark circumstances a few years later; my Mom’s suede jacket (I added the denim cuffs); and needlework belt with my initials on it, made by my grandmother Hand. You can’t see them, but I was also wearing my lace-up Frye boots.”

In her journal, Hand once wrote, “I am being haunted by a town.” The town was Katonah, New York, which she transformed into Kamensic Village, the setting or background for much of her fiction. This photo from 1975 shows the train station where characters Lit and Jamie Casson make their escape at the end of the novel Black Light .

Hand recalls: “In 1976, I was hitchhiking in Putnam County, New York, with my friend Katy. A guy our age picked us up, we drove around and hung out for a few hours, and he then dropped me back at my parents’ house in Pound Ridge. It was only after I got home that I realized I’d left my journal in his car.

Flash forward to 1999, shortly after Black Light was published. I was visiting my folks in Pound Ridge when the phone rang: I picked it up and a voice asked, ‘Is this Elizabeth Hand?’ It turned out to be the guy who’d picked us up — he’d seen a copy of Black Light in his local bookstore and remembered my name (which was in the journal). And, when he went back and read the journal again (which he’d done back in 1976 as well — hey, I would have, too), he realized that some of the people and places I’d written about in the journal ended up in Black Light .”

Hand in proto-punk mode with some friends at their second New Year’s gathering at the Hotel Empire in New York City — at the time a “total dump” (just the way they liked it). Left to right: Michael, Oscar, Julie, Elizabeth, and Steve. Hand says: “The red blodge by my nose is actually my crimson fingernail and a cigarette. I was a chain smoker, also an early do-rag adapter. Oscar inspired Oliver in Waking the Moon; the book was dedicated to him.”