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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 NPR’s Guide to 2017’s Great Reads

PRESS

Brain Pickings

The Times Literary Supplement

NPR’s 2017 Great Reads

The Washington Post

Bustle

Literary Hub

Poetry Foundation

Slutist

Originally shown at Grayduck Gallery in December of 2021 as part of my solo show ROOMS, these are just what you think they are: haunted vaginas.

All are 11” x 14”, watercolor and ink on paper, 2021

Album cover for a recording of Poe’s Ligeia put out by Cadabra Records.

This body of work began my interest the folk life and folklore of Appalachia, The Ozarks and The American South, with a focus on the duality of the healer/witch figure. Using the "Granny witches" of Appalachia as a focal point, I worked to pull apart the many nuanced variations of this archetype and her relationship to history, culture, folklore and broader concepts of femininity. I was very interested in the ways she is sometimes goodly, sometimes wicked and often someplace in between. 

This body of work continued my interest in the folklore of the Appalachian, Ozarks and Southern regions of the U.S. Working in varied media including painting, paper mache sculpture and paper cutouts, I worked to exercise some of the stories I have read over the years that have stayed with me, almost haunting me. 

These works were shown as part of a two person exhibition with artist Teruko Nimura at ICOSA Gallery in Austin, Tx in March of 2018