The Faery Handbag is the fifth title in Short Stops, a series from Conversation Tree Press dedicated to bringing exceptional shorter works of fiction to life through beautifully bound, letterpress-printed, limited editions that begin shipping immediately upon announcement. 

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Illustrated by Rovina Cai

“I know that no one is going to believe any of this. That’s okay. If I thought you would, then I couldn’t tell you. Promise me that you won’t believe a word. That’s what Zofia used to say to me when she told me stories.”

In The Faery Handbag, Kelly Link invites readers into a world where the ordinary and the impossible rest uneasily side by side. Genevieve grows up in the orbit of her grandmother Zofia, whose stories—of a vanished country, of long-remembered histories, of fantastic creatures contained within a vast handbag—hover between affectionate eccentricity and unsettling truth.

It is a story about the ways we carry the past with us: in objects, in memory, in the echo of voices we thought we’d lost. It draws readers into a world that is at once playful and poignant, where the rules of reality bend and the heart’s deepest longings ripple with enchantment. Playful and piercing in equal measure, the story asks what it costs to doubt the stories we are given—and what it costs to believe them.

The Faery Handbag was the 2005 winner of the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and Locus Award for Best Novelette.

Edition Information

The Faery Handbag is a limited edition of 500 unnumbered copies. A brief overview of the edition, with additional details below:

• Artwork: Rovina Cai has contributed three full-colour illustrations, printed separately and individually tipped in by hand.
• Typography: Interior design and typography are by Tony Geer.
• Letterpress printing:  Hand & Eye Editions printed the edition in England on Somerset Book Soft White 115gsm mould-made paper, the kind of paper we usually reserve for our Deluxe Editions.
• Binding: Quarter-bound in book cloth and custom hand-marbled paper from Daniela Prina. The endpapers are GF Smith Colorplan with a linen finish.
• Format: The books have a trim size of 6in × 9in and 45 pages including front and back matter.
• Signatures: All copies are signed by the author and artist.
• Publication price: US$130
• Availability: In stock and shipping. 

The author’s name and title are foil stamped on the spine in the same style as the previous entries in our Short Stops series, ensuring a uniform look across the series.

Availability

Copies of The Faery Handbag are now available to collectors who pre-ordered copies of Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility that came with publisher’s rights (i.e. Deluxe copies #1-200 and all Lettered copies). An email has been sent with a private link to order and copies will begin shipping today. If you did not receive an email and you believe you should have, please let me know.

The private pre-order period ends at 10am ET on Wednesday January 28th, at which time remaining copies will become available to the public.

Copies ship from Ontario, Canada and from England (limited quantity). For US collectors, we are only shipping with Canada Post and paying pre-processing fees on our end, so we do not expect any brokerage or other fees to be charged on shipments. However, we have no control over US government policy. Please see here for more information for US collectors specifically. 

For logistical and practical reasons we cannot combine orders for this title. Thank you for your understanding.

Artwork by Rovina Cai

Rovina Cai has contributed three full colour illustrations that perfectly capture the quiet magic and whimsical tone of The Faery Handbag is her signature style:

About Rovina Cai

Rovina Cai is a freelance illustrator from Melbourne, Australia. Her distinctive style reflects a passion for elegant compositions and poetic imagery layered with symbolism. A graduate of the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Rovina has more than a decade of experience working with a diverse client list across gaming and book publishing. Her work has been recognised with multiple Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. In her spare time, Rovina enjoys sketching in museums and trying out different hobbies in pursuit of the one definitive hobby that she can put in her bio.

Custom Hand-Marbled Paper by Daniela Prina

The custom hand-marbled paper was created by Daniela Prina of Papiers Prina in Belgium.

Daniela describes her inspiration for the design: “The palette was carefully chosen to reflect the recurring colours mentioned in the text: black, of course; pink—soft but not sweet—which adds a touch of romance; silver gray for mystery; green like something from an ancient forest; gold to evoke old-world charm and treasure; and the velvety purple and silvery blue both that feel both rare and enchanted. The swirling pattern of the paper subtly echoes the theme of being drawn into the handbag, as described in the novella, while the pink and silver drops on top reflect the sparkling energy of its prose and plot.”

Typography

The title is set in Juanjo López’s Ultramarina, a charming, condensed display typeface drawing inspiration from nineteenth century wood letters and grotesk sans-serifs of the early twentieth century.

The body text has been set in TypeTogether’s Maiola.

Printing

The text of the edition was letterpress printed by Phil Abel and Robert Hetherington at Hand & Eye Press. Hand and Eye has a distinguished history of not only letterpress-printing their own editions, but collaborating with Folio Society, No Reply Press, Lyra’s Books, and, of course, with Marcelo Anciano on their very own Areté Editions.

About Short Stops

Books in our Short Stops series are a little different from our other editions that come in multiple states. They:

• Are announced and offered for sale when they are completely finished and in hand, with shipping beginning on the same day we begin accepting orders.
  
• Feature shorter works of fiction.
• Have a trim size of 6in by 9in, slightly smaller than our other 6.7in by 9.5in books.
• Have no rights associated with them and do not include a slipcase.
• Always be offered to current Deluxe and Lettered rights-holders first, even though they have no rights attached to them. Rights holders may skip it entirely without losing rights to the next book from the Press, and having a copy of the most recently published book in the Short Stops series does not give any rights to the next in the series.

Kelly Link

Kelly Link is the author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, Get in Trouble, and White Cat, Black Dog. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She was a 2018 MacArthur Fellow and has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She and Gavin J. Grant have co-edited a number of anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and, for young adults, Steampunk! and Monstrous Affections. She is the co-founder of Small Beer Press and co-edits the occasional zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She is the owner of Book Moon, an independent bookshop in Easthampton, MA.

Link was born in Miami, Florida. She currently lives with her family, dog, and chickens in Northampton, Massachusetts.