An Interview by Gina Guadagnino 

“The Fox Maiden” by Priya Sharma will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Pre-order here!

Fox hunting is a vexed subject for many people, given the history of the sport and the allegations of cruelty that led to its being banned in many countries. What kind of research did you do on fox hunting for this piece?

I once visited a stately home with a hunting room, which was horrible and fascinating. It was a window into a world that’s utterly foreign to me. There was a photo of a young girl who’d been bloodied (it was her first hunt and her face had been daubed with fox blood).

I did some reading on fox hunting but I did more reading on foxes. I think they’re gorgeous. I can assure you that no foxes were harmed during the writing of this story.

The changeling myth is very old indeed. What’s your favorite changeling story? 

I love the graphic novel “Dream Hunters” by Neil Gaiman and Toshitaka Amano, which is a Sandman story set in Japan. Also “The Brown Bear of Norway” by Isabel Cole, which was included in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s Black Thorn, White Rose. The whole collection blew me away but this story about love and transformation was achingly beautiful. Am I allowed a third? “The Fig Eater” by Jody Shields, for its strangeness. It was inspired by Freud’s famous Dora case. An unusual heroine investigates a girl’s murder using methods based in folklore and superstition.