Friday, July 12th

From 07:30 pm to 21:00 pm

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Peripheral Witches and Their Lives

This short seminar will focus on witches you have never heard of. We are all familiar with the stories of the Salem witch hunts, with Tituba and Bridget Bishop but how about witches from the periphery? We will be looking at the biographies of female, male, and non-binary self-identifying witches from Turkey, Romania, Iceland, Chile, Scotland, and Argentina, to name a few. What is it that truly defines a witch across geographies and cultures? How does the term “witch” intersect and interact with kindred titles such as healer, diviner, sorcerer, or alchemist? And can peripheral witches teach us strategies for resilience and survival?

Defne Çizakça is a writer and editor who lives between Istanbul and Barcelona. Her Witch’s Trilogy, made up of three illustrated fairy tales focusing on peripheral witches, was published by The Poet House (2021-2023). Her historical novel about the first female alchemist in the Ottoman Empire will be out by ?thaki in May. Both works are in Turkish, although a book of her short stories will be available in English soon.