#67 - Taisia Kitaiskaia, Literary Witch

The Witch Wave

Pam Grossman

Arts, Visual Arts, Spirituality, Other, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2021

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Taisia Kitaiskaia is a Russian-American poet and writer of witchly words. She is the author of two books of experimental, enchanting advice from the infamous Slavic witch, Ask Baba Yaga: Otherworldly Advice for Everyday Troubles and its follow-up, Poetic Remedies for Troubled Times from Ask Baba Yaga. She has also written The Nightgown and Other Poems and Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers, the latter of which is a collaboration with artist (and former Witch Wave guest) Katy Horan that celebrates magical women writers - and was an NPR Best Book of 2017. Together they also released a divination deck, The Literary Witches Oracle.

Taisia has received fellowships from Yaddo and the James A. Michener Center for Writers, and her work has been published in journals such as A Public Space, Gulf Coast, Los Angeles Review of Books, StoryQuarterly, Fence, Guernica and more. She has written for The Hairpin, Electric Literature, Jezebel, and Bitch Media, and her work has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize.

On this episode, Taisia discusses her favorite witchly writers, the fairy tale aspects of her Russian childhood, and the wild wisdom of Baba Yaga.

Pam also discusses the crone archetype, and answers a listener question about changing direction in her academic study of death.

Our sponsors for this episode are Temperance Home and Bar, Mithras Candle, Seasonal Steep, BetterHelp, Hag Swag, and Sarah Faith Gottesdiener’s Moonbeaming online course

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of The Witch Wave is brought to you by Temperance, Home, and Bar Botanica.
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0:56.2	use promo code Witch Wave for 10% off. Ah, it's been a long day. I'm tired.
1:04.5	Ma, I know just what you need. I'll tuck you in and light your my first candles.
1:14.5	That's just what I need. How did you know?
1:16.7	This is secret. My favorite at bedtime. Good night. Good night, Mama.
1:47.6	The world is filled with bewitching people, and you might be one too. Welcome to the podcast
1:56.4	where art is magic, magic is real, and reality is stranger than dreams. I'm Pam Grossman,
2:03.5	and this is the Witch Wave.
2:33.5	Hello, and welcome to the Witch Wave. My friends, how are you? It is the one year anniversary of the
2:48.3	pandemic this week, and I feel as if I've aged 50 years in the last 12 months, and I imagine you
2:58.3	can relate. However, today I am leaning into this creaky chrome vibe, because on this episode,
3:08.9	my guest, Taisia Kitaiskaya, and I will be talking about arguably the most potent
3:18.0	chrome of all time, the infamous Witch of Slavic folklore Baba Yaga.
3:27.2	Crones in general have become truly beloved characters to me, whether real life ones or those
3:35.3	who occupy the forests of fairy tales. Historically, they've been figures to fear or mock.
3:45.3	After all, the word chrome is derived from an old French term which literally means carry on.
	...

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