Illustrated Books

Literary Witches | A Celebration of Women Writers Wielding Magic Through Words

Literary Witches illustrated by Katy Horan

Vir­ginia Woolf

As Hal­loween bar­rels towards us (and I still don’t have a cos­tume…), there’s one recent­ly released book that is in keep­ing with the spooky month, but won’t scare you; it will make you cel­e­brate the tal­ents of women! Called Lit­er­ary Witch­es, it’s a col­lab­o­ra­tion between writer Taisia Kitaiska­ia and illus­tra­tor Katy Horan (pre­vi­ous­ly). “Lit­er­ary Witch­es came from the idea that to write or cre­ate art is to con­jure,” Katy tells me in an email, “so it fol­lows that female writ­ers are witch­es wield­ing their par­tic­u­lar brand of magick.”

The book reimag­ines 30 of these authors as true witch­es; not the stereo­typ­i­cal broom-rid­ing beings with a point­ed hat, but rather “fig­ures of rad­i­cal cre­ativ­i­ty, orig­i­nal­i­ty, and empow­er­ment.” Each woman has a vignette writ­ten by Taisia and an accom­pa­ny­ing por­trait paint­ed by Katy. Their recre­ations are new ways to think about lit­er­ary fig­ures like Emi­ly Dick­in­son and Toni Morrison.

Katy is fond of her illus­tra­tion for Octavia Butler:

She was new to me and this project led me to some of her short sto­ries, one of which (“Blood­child”) was about an alien species sub­ju­gat­ing humans and the com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship between the two. So rather than fill­ing her por­trait with the type of imagery that many of the oth­ers had (flow­ers, water, ani­mals, etc…), I got to dream up humanoid fig­ures, paint some ten­ta­cles and pon­der how to por­tray the dom­i­na­tion of one species over anoth­er. It was a real­ly sat­is­fy­ing chal­lenge and I am so hap­py with how it turned out.

Lit­er­ary Witch­es is now avail­able through Ama­zon.

Writer Taisia Kitaiskaia and illustrator Katy Horan have created Literary Witches, a celebration of 30 women writers conjuring magic through their words.

Literary Witches illustrated by Katy Horan

Emi­ly Bronte

Literary Witches illustrated by Katy Horan

Anna Akham­to­va

Literary Witches illustrated by Katy Horan

Jamaica Kin­caid

Literary Witches illustrated by Katy Horan

Anne Car­son

Literary Witches illustrated by Katy Horan

Shirley Jack­son

Literary Witches illustrated by Katy Horan

Literary Witches illustrated by Katy Horan

Literary Witches illustrated by Katy Horan

Literary Witches illustrated by Katy Horan

Literary Witches illustrated by Katy Horan