Illustrations of two classic Murder Ballads, The Dreadful Wind and Rain and The Bloody Gardener.
A Murder Ballad is a traditional folk song that tells the tale of a murder. Many date back to the 17th Century where they were printed on broadsheets and sold throughout Europe.
A collaboration between poet Taisia Kitaiskaia and artist Katy Horan, Literary Witches draws a connection between witches and visionary writers: both are figures of formidable creativity, and empowerment. Through written and painted portraits, Kitaiskaia and Horan honor the magical qualities of well-known and obscure authors alike, including Virginia Woolf, Mira Bai, Toni Morrison, Emily Dickinson, Octavia E. Butler, Sandra Cisneros, and many more.
"Wondrous... haunting... vibrant. A lovely compendium of impressionistic sketches, fusing biographical facts with flights of the invocational imagination." — Brain Pickings
"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.” — The Times Literary Supplement
"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 NPRs Guide to 2017s Great Reads
PRESS
SELECTED ILLUSTRATIONS FROM LITERARY WITCHES
AGATHA CHRISTIE
ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK
MIRABAI
JOY HARJO
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
SHIRLEY JACKSON
MARY SHELLEY
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
ANGELA CARTER
VIRGINIA WOOLF
TONI MORRISON
all images © Katy Horan