Grim Tales with a happy ending

Amanda Girvan and Simone Anderson, Grim Tale project leaders. Photo/George Novak

A tale two years in the making has finally come to fruition, shedding light on domestic violence.

Grim Tales is a coffee table book which tells the stories of domestic violence survivors as fairytales, with words and illustrations by local authors and artists. The project was the brain-child of Tauranga Women's Refuge children's advocate Amanda Girvan and Incubator director Simone Anderson.

Simone says it's really exciting to have the book finished at last. "When we get together and talk about it, it's kind of goosebumpy. Just because it's been 2 1/2 years," she says.

"The amount of work that people have put into it, the Women's Refuge and the Incubator teams and all the contributors, it's mind-boggling, really."

Simone says the public response to the book since it's become available has been great - from calls from locals wanting to purchase it to television stations wanting to know about the project.

The project isn't a fundraiser as such, she says. Its focus is on awareness. "That's the most important thing - for people to be aware that there's domestic violence out there ... coming up with a clever idea to make an unpalatable subject [get] in people's faces.

"It's like a Trojan horse - getting this really powerful, emotional thing onto the radar of people who might not necessarily have been aware of it. But then they have to take responsibility for it, because it's our society," Simone says.

She hopes that Grim Tales will help us, as a society, address the issue. "We're in the 21st century.

That's why we wanted these [Brothers Grimm-style] stories, they're like stories from the 18th or 19th century. You know, the grim tales are happening today. We should have evolved by now."

Simone says her biggest personal lesson throughout the project has been how domestic violence spans all parts of society.

"It's not who you expect are the story-tellers. There's all these other people that you think 'my gosh, this person has had this horrible imprint on their life', but then they're not defined by it any longer," she says. "You realise that people have got these skeletons in their closet."

Simone says that by purchasing the book, people can be part of the solution. Pre-orders can be made at grimtales.co.nz, with books likely to arrive in mid-April.