“I never declared myself a witch. I just remembered I was one.”
—anonymous Facebook posting
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What’s a witch? Look for her silhouette—a woman in an old-fashioned black bombazine dress with a pointy hat and a pointy chin and a pointy nose that reaches around toward the tip of her chin. She’s not undead; she’s curiously eternal. And yet a witch is a real person—just not one that everybody is brave enough to meet. Witches are reviled, feared, attacked. But witches are admired, too, and in this book we give them all the love they’ve been missing. Every day, a new witch appears in the nighttime sky. Why? Because we need her.
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Why witches? There are times and places where only something catalytic will get the job done. Witches have that special ability to make ordinary things—brooms, for instance—do extraordinary things.
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To give American Witches their proper due, we found criteria that emphasize new forces in our society. An American Witch is, for our purposes, someone who’s alive right now. She has to be able to catalyze her resources into powers—a talent that can surprise even the witch herself. Lastly, she has to be willing to use those powers, and damn the consequences. She can’t be in it for the money.
New witches are swooping over our horizons every day. Who did we miss?
Look for a link here soon to send us your nominations.
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Then find your broom and get ready to ride.
A former critic for the New York Times and the Village Voice, Sally Eckhoff is also a visual artist, animator, and rider. Sally’s short, hand-drawn animations have appeared in film festivals around the US and Europe; she’s currently working on the pilot of Beastly Lives, a podcast on animals, art, and adventure. She lives in the Hudson Valley of New York State with her black cat, Sharpie, and continues to ride and train Spot, her pinto horse.
Sally is also the author of the memoirs F*ck Art (Let’s Dance) and How Horses Get Their Names, and the author and illustrator of F*ck Art: A Downtown Coloring Book. This is her second coloring book.