Reading Angela Carter's 'The company of wolves'

Join us for a discussion of Angela Carter's classic short story, 'The company of wolves'

Welcome to our very first Orange & Bee reading roundtable!

What is a reading roundtable?

Reading roundtables are a little bit like a book club, but instead of meeting in person, we’re meeting online, and asynchronously, to discuss a piece of writing we’ve all read.

The basic idea is that the editorial team at The Orange & Bee choose a text for us to read (for future roundtables, we will ask you to nominate texts for us to read, too), and one of us provides a brief introduction to that text, and then we all (you included!) dive into the comments to further discuss the text.

There are no set rules or guidelines to follow. Whatever your responses (thoughts! feelings! wonderings!) we invite you to offer them courageously and boldly. The only thing we ask is that you take an approach to the text that’s largely curious and appreciative, focused on engaging deeply and honestly with the text, and with each other.

What I’m hoping we’ll work towards is a collaboratively-generated close reading of the text. I anticipate that, because I’m a writer and editor and writing teacher/mentor, and many of you are also—like me—both readers and producers of writing, some of our close reading will emerge out of attempting to read the text as writers (or editors, or translators, or publishers, or illustrators).

We might seek insight into writing (processes, techniques, strategies, etc) from reading this work.

We might seek insight into the relationship between fairy tales and contemporary writing.

We might seek insight into what it is to be human (or nonhuman); we might ask what this story has to teach us about life, and other catastrophes.

We might, more simply, seek to gain some deeper understanding the story than we can gain reading it on our own/in isolation.

We might discover other types of insights, or understandings, depending on the text itself, and what we each have to offer.

Shall we begin? Let’s begin …