Writing Her Own Fairy Tale

A young woman moves to Ireland to escape an abusive childhood home and finds work in a bed-and-breakfast on the Aran Islands. She makes friends with the other young women working there, all starting their own adulthoods. Soon, she meets and falls in love with a mysterious and handsome Irish horse trainer. Within a year, they’re married; a few years later, she’s pregnant. She starts looking forward to a quiet, magical life full of children, travel, writing, and horses.

When Betsy Cornwell ’10 was living this story, she thought of it as a fairy tale. She even imagined that someday she’d write a memoir about moving to Ireland. She pictured a happy ending scene in which she was running toward her new Irish husband at the airport after cutting ties with her family in the States and closing a dark chapter. It would be her new beginning.

But there was a darker underbelly to the end of that story, which Cornwell only sees in retrospect. When her son was a year old, Cornwell fled the home she and her husband had made and sought refuge at a local domestic violence center. Her husband had been abusive and threatening, and she feared he would become physically violent. She and her son teetered on the edge of homelessness as she attempted to patch together enough funds to build a stable life for them both. But stability felt impossible. As a writer—estranged from her biological family and not receiving any financial support from her husband—it was precarious to live in a country with a housing crisis where she hadn’t yet established citizenship. Because of custody laws, she also couldn’t leave the country with her son.

This is where Cornwell’s Ring of Salt: A Memoir of Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland, published in September 2025 by Avid Reader Press, begins. Cornwell makes clear that while she isn’t a damsel in distress, fairy tales can come in many forms. In her book, she tells the story of a woman who uses every possible resource and all of her wits to save her son and herself, and ends up a heroine—not only in her own life, but for a community of single mothers.

Cornwell’s passion for fairy tales began at a young age. Authors like L. Frank Baum, Brian Froud, and Robin McKinley were some of her early favorites. And she remembers first considering attending Smith because she learned that fantasy authors Madeleine L’Engle ’41 and Jane Yolen ’60 were alums.

“I always loved that kind of storytelling, and I always knew I wanted to be a writer,” Cornwell remembers. “But I thought I had to write realistic contemporary fiction in order to do ‘serious’ writing.” A class she took during her sophomore year at Smith—Fairy Tales and Gender, taught by Elizabeth (Betsey) Harries—changed the way she viewed these stories and stoked a fire in her to make them her life’s work. The class showed Cornwell that fairy tales could be darker and more complex than what many of us had been led to believe by the Walt Disney movies we grew up with. “There is no one true version of a fairy tale,” Cornwell says. For instance, while Disney showed us a cheery, vapid Cinderella with magical talking mice and a happy ending in which the stepsisters are merely annoyed, the Brothers Grimm version has the evil stepsisters cutting off parts of their feet to fit into the glass slipper, filling the shoe with their blood, and having their eyeballs pecked out by pigeons for their evilness.

Stories we think of as fairy tales have their roots in myth and folklore from all over the world and throughout time. Many can be traced back to yarns humans used to spin around the fire before written words existed. Often, these stories were—and still are—ways to help us talk about taboo or uncomfortable subjects: rape, murder, class, race, and—often—women stepping outside of the confines of society.

“Betsey Harries’s class is what really connected the dots for me—that I could do that kind of writing and there was no reason not to take it seriously,” Cornwell says. So, in her senior year, she asked Harries to be her adviser for a thesis project in which she’d write her own collection of fairy-tale retellings.

Eventually, one of these retellings became Cornwell’s first novel, Tides, based on Irish mythological creatures known as selkies—shapeshifters from the sea who are part seal, part human. It was published in 2013, when Cornwell was just 25 years old. Her love of selkie lore sparked her desire to move to Ireland, and her time there as an author of young adult novels had been fruitful: By 2018, she had published three more novels.

But even though she’d authored four books—including some that made the New York Times bestseller list—and had a teaching contract at the University of Galway and a few freelance writing and editing jobs, the economics of the young adult literature industry meant that she was just scraping by financially. By the time she left her husband in spring 2018, she wasn’t sure how she was going to make ends meet.

That year, things came to a head. Her teaching job was on summer break, and though she was chipping away at her next novel while her baby slept and she kept one eye out for her estranged husband, she wouldn’t receive her advance until the draft was complete. She took on as much freelance work as she possibly could—editing, tutoring, podcasting—to pay rent and a deposit on the cheapest place she could find, a 600-euro-a-month ($708) bungalow. But one month before her book deadline, she found herself short on rent. Electricity and food had eaten up the funds from her freelance work.

Not knowing what else to do, she asked for help in one of the only spaces she felt safe: an online community full of Smith alums. And a whole crew of fairy godmothers answered her call.

When award-winning middle-grade author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley ’89 first started to read Cornwell’s posts in the private, alum-only Facebook group Friday Teas in the Cloud: Where Smithies Sip and Shine, she recognized Cornwell’s name as a fellow author of novels for young readers. In the now-defunct group, which existed from 2016 to 2020, approximately 12,000 alums from around the world shared a virtual version of the Smith tradition of Friday tea. Each Friday, the tea room would “open,” and Smithies would share a photo of a beverage and a description of what they were drinking, along with their highs and lows of the week. Even though it was a large group, it quickly became a place where vulnerability was welcomed and community support could balloon between relative strangers.

For years, Cornwell had been posting fairly regularly. She’d written of her life in Ireland, her books, her pregnancy, and the trouble with her marriage. She’d also mentioned that she’d received a master of fine arts from the University of Notre Dame, where Brubaker Bradley’s husband and son had both studied. “We had enough in common that we both knew of each other already,” Brubaker Bradley says. Then, Cornwell’s posts became about escaping her home and seeking a stable place to live. “I was following this situation with her husband and son week to week, and it was getting fairly alarming to read.”

Many others had felt similarly. So, when Cornwell posted in July 2018 that she was short on rent and offered up her freelance writing, editing, and tutoring services to fellow alums to try to get the cash she needed in time, the response came as a shock. She got some offers for gigs and orders for signed books, yes, but she also got donations—enough to cover one and a half months of rent. In other words, she’d been given a little more time, a little more breathing room.

“It really made me think about what it’s possible to ask for. There’s so much shame around asking for help,” Cornwell says. “But I think it was specifically the Friday Teas group that made me feel safe enough to do that because it felt like such a supportive group, and because I’d had the positive experience on campus of doing Friday tea.” And putting her need on the screen for others to read across oceans and time zones became a first step in building a whole web of closer connections that would change her life and the lives of many others.

A few months later, Brubaker Bradley wrote to Cornwell to say she would be in Galway for a day while on a trip with her family. The two met for lunch. Cornwell’s son—whom Cornwell calls “Robin” in Ring of Salt due to ongoing safety concerns—joined in his high chair. In that hour, they bonded. When Cornwell mentioned that she was estranged from her parents because of childhood abuse—she’d filed a police report against her father the last time she was home—Brubaker Bradley immediately offered herself up as an “aunt” to Cornwell and Robin. She sent gifts on their birthdays, and they began a private correspondence that buoyed Cornwell with moral and financial support. “We understand each other very well,” Brubaker Bradley says. “I’ve made a living as a writer, too, except that my husband always had a very good job—he was a surgeon. And I always knew that I could support my children if I needed to, but I never had to, and Betsy did not have that luxury.”

Cornwell made her deadline for her next book, A Circus Rose, but the sense of desperation didn’t cease. She was still living in fear of her estranged husband, who had found out where she and Robin were living and started to show up there at night, drunk and threatening. She needed a safe home. When she came across a real estate listing for a literal castle, she shared an unorthodox scheme with the Facebook group: She’d sell a book about fixing up an old Irish castle to make it a safe place for her and her baby, and use the money from the book sale to buy the castle. There was much enthusiasm for the idea, and one alum in particular took note.

Despite sharing a Smith house (Baldwin) and a major (English language and literature), Dara Kaye ’09 and Cornwell never met during their time in Northampton. But as Cornwell’s weekly posts revealed more and more about her unstable living situation, Kaye recognized the tale for what it was. “In a community of mostly women, the vast majority know someone who has endured a violent or abusive relationship,” she says. “The fact that she was telling us in time to help felt like a gift to me.”

Kaye is a successful literary agent who specializes in nonfiction books. So when she read about Cornwell’s castle plan, she commented that she’d be happy to donate some time to reading a proposal. “When she started posting updates about this idea that had to do with book proposals, I was already so invested in her safety and in her kid’s safety—I had a newborn at the time. So when she needed something so squarely in my wheelhouse, I just felt excited to be able to offer some help,” Kaye remembers.

One version of the fairy tale might have ended here, with a big book contract and an actual castle. But when Cornwell made an offer to the owner, he refused. Another ending was working its way toward her instead.

It’s an early evening in September 2025, and Cornwell and Robin, now 8, have just returned from the playground near their permanent home: a former knitting factory, built in 1906, which once offered jobs to local women. Since then, the property has been an Irish-language cinema and a jewelry-making studio. All day Cornwell had been in and out of her office, where cool Irish sunlight streams through the window, writing her daily word count for her newest project, answering emails about her upcoming book tour, getting Robin off to school, and clearing space for builders to arrive for the day. The house is being renovated to turn the upstairs bedroom into a separate apartment that will be rented out to artists and offered at no cost to single mothers—a part of The Old Knitting Factory artist residency that Cornwell created and manages.

Cornwell found a listing for “The Old Knitting Factory” at the beginning of the COVID lockdowns in spring 2020, during her regular perusal of real estate that might offer a safer, more stable place to raise her son. A longtime knitter, she was drawn to the name and the history. When she visited the property, she couldn’t get over the way it sat right on a pristine lake, looking out toward those magical Aran Islands where she’d first lived in Ireland. The tall walls held large windows that were uncommon for Irish houses but provided excellent light for the knitters. Wild strawberries grew outside. As soon as she first set foot on the grounds, she could see it as a home and a refuge. She put together a proposal to buy the building, which had been sitting on the market for years.

But as with so many parts of Cornwell’s story, buying the knitting factory did not go exactly as planned. The owner agreed to rent it to Cornwell for a year before giving her the option to buy—but only if she could pay the whole year’s rent up front.

She didn’t have that kind of money, so Cornwell turned to the Friday Teas community. Inspired by the support of her fellow Smith alums, she went wider, starting a crowdfunding campaign and a Patreon page where she would share the progress of turning The Old Knitting Factory into a residency space and home. “When I was freshly out of my marriage and terrified all the time, I kept getting these roundups of residency opportunities from my M.F.A. program office, and I read them all very masochistically,” Cornwell remembers. “I just felt so frustrated because I knew I was qualified—I had the publications, I had a shot—but I was completely excluded because of my caretaking and financial responsibilities.” Artist residencies rarely offer support for child care or lost wages from taking time off work, making them difficult for many people to take advantage of—single parents in particular.

So, from the very first business plan Cornwell showed to potential mortgage lenders, buying the knitting factory had been about turning the space into a place for her own family, but also about giving other single parent artists what she herself had so desperately needed: Time. Space. Child care.

Supporters who understood her mission and her predicament came out of the woodwork. Though she easily raised the funds for the first year’s rent, she still needed a down payment and a lender.

Cornwell was rejected multiple times by banks for any kind of loan or mortgage. But she’d reached back out to Kaye, the literary agent, to ask whether she would represent her memoir proposal—a sale she hoped would help her buy the property without the need for a mortgage at all. Cornwell already had a literary agent, but she specialized in children’s books and felt Kaye’s expertise could get her proposal into the right hands.

But the book didn’t sell. Thinking back, Kaye says, “The story wasn’t finished yet, which was hard to see at the time.”

No lenders came through, either. Instead, the forces of community, care, and fate finished the story. Piece by piece, donation by donation, Cornwell somehow came up with the entirety of the purchase price. Many who donated or lent funds said they were doing so on behalf of their own single mothers.

Cornwell purchased The Old Knitting Factory in November 2021. Each chapter of Ring of Salt is dedicated to a person or group who helped her buy the property, and hundreds of individuals are listed in the back pages as donors. Smithies make up the majority of these names, Cornwell says, and the Smith community will continue to play a part in the residency going forward. For example, a professional mural artist and Baldwin housemate, Amanda Hill ’10, will paint a mural at the house when the renovations are complete. And thanks to funding from Martha Vail Barker ’86, one residency per year will be named for the late poet Liz Crowell ’86.

In 2022, 2023, and 2024, Cornwell was able to provide one weeklong residency per year—plus a cash stipend for child care—to single mothers from around the world who needed the time and space to rest, write, or create art. She and Kaye sold the book proposal to a publisher in 2023. The funds will go toward upkeep, bills, and renovations to the residency space; it should be completed this spring, when a private apartment will open to residents year-round. Cornwell hopes Ring of Salt will continue to help spread the word about the space. Paid residencies and Cornwell’s Patreon will fund child care–inclusive residencies for single mothers and other parents of marginalized identities. There will be at least four in 2026.

After working together for years, Kaye and Cornwell finally met in person during the U.S. leg of Cornwell’s book tour in September 2025. At each stop, they found a community partner that would offer information, support, and fundraising opportunities for victims of domestic violence, such as Safe Passage in Northampton. Kaye says the book tells two tales: the story of The Old Knitting Factory, and the story of how Cornwell escaped the cycle of abuse. “The best and highest purpose of writing this book for her was if somebody out there reads it and recognizes this pattern and it helps them get out and live a life of freedom and joy and safety—then that’s success.”

Freedom, joy, and safety are exactly what Brubaker Bradley experienced when she visited Cornwell at The Old Knitting Factory after the purchase went through. “It was so cozy. Betsy was making cheese scones; her child was telling me about reptiles. There was colorful fabric draped over all of the sofas and cheerful child’s artwork all over the fireplace mantel.” There were other guests in the house, too—a mother and child who had recently left their own abusive home and needed refuge until things settled. Brubaker Bradley remembers watching Robin and the other child play with a bubble machine on the front porch—a simple yet profound image of safety and joy.

As Cornwell prepared to go on a two-week book tour in fall 2025 that would take her back to the United States for the first time in more than a decade, she was anxious about leaving Robin for an extended period. Then she remembered a gift Betsey Harries had sent before Robin was born: an egg timer and a note that said, “Whenever your baby is screaming and it feels like too much, put him down in his crib, set the egg timer for 10 minutes, and walk away and go outside. He’ll be fine.” Cornwell saw the gift as newly meaningful: “Her gift was saying, ‘Do not feel bad if you need to go do something for yourself. Your baby will survive, and you need to do it.’”

Harries died in 2021, and Cornwell thinks of her often. Coincidentally, the two spent a lot of time during Cornwell’s senior year talking about Harries’s experience as a single mother while pursuing her doctorate at Yale in the 1970s. “Obviously, she did not know at the time that I was also going to be a single mom. But I think about that all the time now, and I really wish I could have a conversation with her about that.”

In a way, Ring of Salt is that conversation—a way to tell a story about a single mother to other single mothers, abuse survivors, and community members who recognize loved ones who have been through something similar. Across time and space, these are the kinds of stories that last and reveal that all of us contain elements of the heroine, the villain, and the godmother. Perhaps this is Cornwell’s version of a fairy tale after all.

Maggie Mertens ’09 is a journalist in Seattle and the author of Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women (Algonquin Books, 2024). This story appears in the Winter 2026 issue of the Smith Quarterly.