Sarah Lowes has always been fascinated by stories. She spent the early part of her career as a Primary School teacher where she was able to study the effects of the written and spoken word on young children. She then trained as a psychotherapist, specializing in fairy tales and realizing that story creates a kind of trance where all things are possible and many things can be healed. Sarah lives in Liverpool, England and has a private practice as a psychotherapist and as a creative consultant to professional writers.
Miss Clara is a French artist with a great following among readers of fairy tales. Her illustrations start with tiny and intricately detailed paper maquettes of princesses, elves, wolves and enchanted scenes which she photographs and completes digitally.
Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories, called eventyr in Danish or "fairy-tales" in English, express themes that transcend age and nationality.
Andersen's fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature readers as well. Some of his most famous fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", "The Nightingale", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling", and many more.