Literary Witches

"What a pleasure to read this ode to women writers whose works enchant, mystify, consume, and ensnare. Refreshingly global, covering authors across time, ethnicity, class, sensibility, religion, and aesthetic, Literary Witches successfully weaves together the personal, the political, and the heretical. Sometimes quiet and contemplative, other times whimsical and humorous, and always with an undercurrent of frantic, gnashing violence, this book is a dazzling tribute to the women who've conjured our cultural world."―Rivers Solomon, Afrofuturist and author of An Unkindness of Ghosts

"Literary Witches is a kaleidoscopic grimoire that reveals our beloved literary craftswomen as the powerful witches we know them to be. Katy Horan's resplendent illustrations pulse with primal magic and are the kindling that set Taisia Kitaiskaia's gripping, exquisitely crafted words ablaze. This collaboration will not only inspire you to dig deeper into transportive works of fiction and poetry, but to access your inner creatrix. Above all, Literary Witches is a call to action to become the witch who writes her own story and wills it into the world."―Kristen J. Sollée, author of Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive

"Part portal into the superpowers of irreverent female literary heroines and part illustrated almanac of fun facts dispatched through the lens of the ultimate mystical female archetype, Literary Witches is at the same time enormously enjoyable, rich in information, and visually brilliant."―Lisa Congdon, artist, illustrator, and author

"Literary Witches is itself an act of witchcraft, a spellbook to wake the living and the dead. Taisia Kitaiskaia and Katy Horan have conjured lucid, intuitive, psychoactive visions of how these brilliant women writers have inhabited space and time. Transformative, revivifying, gorgeous, unsettling, and intensely moving, this book is a volume of poetry, miniature encyclopedia, and twenty-first-century illuminated manuscript all at once. I'll treasure this book like a lucky object and return to it whenever I need courage, or mischief, or beauty, or permission."―Jia Tolentino, writer for The New Yorker online

"Horan's beautiful, ominous illustrations combined with Kitaiskaia's juicy author highlights leave the reader wanting more. Together they cast an encouraging, powerful, feminine spell of honor & inspiration."―Faythe Levine, curator, filmmaker, and author

"The perfect gift for the nasty woman in your haunted house."

"A treasure."

"Literary Witches pulls together the witchiest women writers (including Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Octavia E. Butler, Sandra Cisneros, and Flannery O'Connor) in one book with reading recommendations and gorgeous portraits of each."

"Kitaiskaia crafts mythological identities for each author in this wonderfully broad collection spanning Emily Dickinson to Octavia Butler to Sappho and Mirabai, each illustrated by Katy Horan and elevating witches from warty Halloween decorations to visionary and inspirational literary icons."

"Gorgeous illustrations accompany profiles of female writers from every genre, identity and era conceivable. As necessary a project as I can imagine in this day and age, this is art, poetry and history marshaled together in tremendous, joyful celebration."―Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties, writing for NPR's Guide to 2017's Great Reads

"There's something intoxicating about imagining your favorite female writers as having spiritual powers."

"Perfect for readers, writers, and coven members."

"Wondrous...haunting... vibrant. A lovely compendium of impressionistic sketches, fusing biographical facts with flights of the invocational imagination."

"Kitaiskaia's visions are delightfully uncanny... Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers is a compendium of bookish saints, lavishly and bodily portrayed by Horan."