The Trouble with Fairy Tales by Plum Johnson - Spotlight

 

The Trouble with Fairy Tales (Viking), Plum Johnson's much-anticipated second memoir, is a wise and insightful reflection on the relationships that span a lifetime. In it, Plum explores how we often sacrifice our independence and identity in our love lives, falling for the fairytale notion of “happily ever after”, and how it can take years, and many detours, to fulfil the most important relationship—the one with ourselves.

Ripe with the humorous anecdotes, charming insights, and aching revelations so characteristic of Plum’s style, the book is our window onto her reinvention of self as she moves through the various roles that many women inhabit: from compliant child to loving mother, rebel wife, artist, and successful writer.

Plum’s writing urges her readers to turn inward to reach a deeper understanding of their own tangled relationships. Funny and resonant, The Trouble with Fairy Tales is the kind of striking personal narrative that will stir and inspire women of all ages.

Born in Richmond, Virginia, Plum spent her early years in Hong Kong and Singapore before her family immigrated to Canada, settling in Oakville, Ontario.

After receiving her B.Sc. degree in education from Wheelock College in Boston, she returned to Toronto and enrolled in the M.F.A. Theatre program at York University.

In 1983, she founded KidsCanada Publishing Corp. to pioneer the first parenting publications in Canada and was awarded the Toronto Sun’s Women On The Move Award for outstanding achievement in business.  Over the next ten years, her flagship News Magazine, KidsToronto, won multiple international design awards and in 1992, Plum was awarded the PPA Award of Excellence for her monthly editorial column.

In 1996, she invented the Pictureball, as seen on TSC.

In 2002, she co-founded Help’s Here! – a resource magazine for seniors and caregivers.

In addition to her writing and publishing, Plum is an accomplished illustrator and portrait painter, having long surpassed her goal of “ten thousand hours on the brush.” Over the past twenty-five years, she has studied under Telford Fenton, Robert Markle, John Viljoen and Dan Hughes. She has also studied briefly under Susan Low-Beer, Maryon Kantaroff, Lila Lewis, and Mark Thurman, among others. In the summer of 2006, she traveled to England to study etching & printmaking under Freya Payne at the Falmouth College of Art.