Kitchen Witch
Natural Remedies & Crafts for Home, Health, & Beauty
Simple, traditional living can connect us with our ancestors, our communities, and ourselves, especially during this time of political turmoil and environmental crisis.
If you’re looking to begin extricating yourself from reliance on the toxic consumer products that we have come to take for granted, this is the book for you. In this book my friend Nadine and I share all we know about traditional healing methods and practical DIY skills, and using simple instructions we cover many aspects of a natural lifestyle, from home and garden to body and mind. The book is peppered throughout with fascinating witchy history and lore, fun crafts to make, and simple practices that will help you increase mindfulness and strengthen your connection to nature—and yourself.
Sustainable Living Through Witchcraft
In 2016 my good friend Nadine and I made a zine called the Kytchyn Witche. Over the years she and I had bonded over our shared enthusiasm for making things and damning the man, and our zine was a collection of recipes for DIY skin care and household cleaners using natural ingredients, plus advice on how to grow, harvest, and use herbs in your projects. We had a lot of fun writing it, and it turned out to be the most popular zine I’ve ever made.
When Microcosm Publishing asked us to expand the zine into a full-length book, we were thrilled. We spent a couple years tinkering in our kitchens, reading lots of books, and interviewing the people who inspire us to be better stewards of the planet, including artists, gardeners, herbalists, and our own moms. The result is this beautiful hardcover book that is packed full of projects for the home, body, and mind. You don’t have to be a witch to enjoy it, but as I like to say — this is a book about natural living for the spiritually inclined.
Other Books
“Via intimate, relatable writing we also get to know Haegele, whose observations and ruminations are astute and, at times, hilarious.”
White Elephants
On Yard Sales, Relationships, and Finding What Was Missing
White elephants are the odd, old, and discarded things that end up at yard sales and flea markets—and Katie Haegele loves them all. Well, an awful lot of them, anyway. She lives a few blocks from the house she grew up in, and every summer she and her mother scour the neighborhood tag sales, looking for treasure. In this unusual, touching memoir, she chronicles the places they go and the things they find there, describing every detail in her singular, charming voice. In the end she finds more than just ugly table lamps and frilly aprons, ultimately discovering a real friendship with her mother, a deeper connection to her father, whose death left a hole in her life—and even a bit of romance.
"Katie Haegele's writing is a miracle. No matter how grumpy you've gotten, White Elephants will inspire you to turn your days into adventures again—whether or not that includes looking through weird shit on other people's lawns."
—Ariel Gore, author of Atlas of the Human Heart and The End of Eve
Less like a book and more like a letter from a friend, a friend who knows all about the art of the rummage and the nuances of reviewing yard sales. It's a truly joyful read but also tinged with sadness and grief, in the way happiness is in real life. When you relate to another person, they have history: an amalgamation of grief, nostalgia, pain, and also happiness. This book will stay in my life for a long time.
—Razorcake
"This charmingly curious book will have you thinking you are listening to a soothing friend. Perhaps Katie Haegele might be a unique, American version of Sylvia Smith."
—Tama Janowitz, author of Slaves of New York
”Katie's smart like this…smart about the insides of people's lives and the retro-contemporary nostalgia of bygones and medleys I've never heard of. White Elephants is about the trips Katie takes with her widowed mom to yard sales and the things they buy—things like weird wicker belts, working typewriters, grandmother quality dresses, foldable purses, vintage stationery (the good, the bad, and the ugly), fashion plates. It's about how her own apartment absorbs the after stuff of others, and how it defines her, in many ways, and releases her from the thing she will never, through all the digging, find: her dad, who died of cancer when Katie was still a college student. White Elephants is also about a boy named Joe, who loves what Katie loves, and about a power outage after a storm in Nova Scotia, and about swimming in your underwear, and about getting past the migraine. It's earthy and near in its language, a conversation Katie has, a book so small and lovingly made that you can hold it in the palm of your hand.”
—Beth Kephart, author of National Book Award Finalist A Slant of the Sun
Slip of the Tongue
Talking About Language
Slip of the Tongue is a love letter to words and the myriad and contradictory ways we use them. Author Katie Haegele is a respected memoirist who makes sense of the world around her by looking at the ways we use language: to communicate, to make art, and simply to survive. She takes us through her life by describing her family’s rich linguistic history and her own coming of age as a feminist and an artist, and introduces us to her hometown of Philadelphia, a city lively with graffiti, poetry, and the remnants of its colonial heritage. She connects history to the present with research, interviews, and musings on digital technology and the contemporary state of the English language. As bawdy and brainy as it is heart-warming, Slip of the Tongue is a celebration of humanity in all its complicated beauty. Haegele's tone is personal and conversational—she is able to explore her subjects with both intellectual vigor and a lot of heart. Her memoir takes the usually inaccessible academic subject of linguistics and joyfully breaks it open for all of us to see and marvel at.
"...honest and generous, & alive to the transcendent possibilities of language."—Marilyn Johnson, author of This Book is Overdue!
“From dissections of slang words to lyrical meditations on supposedly untranslatable foreign-language terms, Slip of the Tongue, Katie Haegele's delightful collection of personal essays on language, gave me page-turning hours of sheer word-pleasure.” —Lynn Levin, Philadelphia Inquirer
Cats I’ve Known
On Love, Loss, and Being Graciously Ignored
From deep friendships to brief encounters, this is the story of the cats in Katie Haegele's life, or rather the story of her life in relation to the many cats she meets in Philadelphia's streets, alleys, houses, apartments, and bookstores. Through Haegele's sharp, wise, and at times hilarious gaze, we see cats for what they truly are: minor deities that mostly ignore the human foibles being played out around them. They accept our offerings with equanimity and occasionally bestow some nice thing on us. Haegele, author of White Elephants and Slip of the Tongue, has a unique and compelling sensibility, and it's a treat to see the world through her eyes as she shows us all the meanness, weirdness, and vulnerability of humans, against an ever-shifting backdrop of the cats we often take for granted, and who ignore us all democratically in return.
"Have you ever known a cat who mattered so much to you, or who was so ubiquitous, you couldn’t imagine a life without them? Katie Haegele has known dozens. In Cats I’ve Known, she offers engaging, humorous and touching chronicles about them, with a rich illustration of the subject accompanying each of the accounts. ... The book is accessible and reads as though it were a personal journal. ... she uses the animals as a gateway into observing the people around her, from family ... to friends and, perhaps most intriguingly, strangers. The book’s strongest moment is when it asks a question many readers may have asked themselves: 'How do you characterize the relationships people have with animals?' For Haegele’s, they’re similar to the relationships she has with people, but 'simpler.' A book about cats could seem banal and hackneyed, especially since the antics of countless fleet-footed felines are just a quick internet search away. But in Cats I’ve Known, Haegele injects enough of herself — and other characters in her life — to make it well worth the read." —Broken Pencil
“Katie’s known a lot of cats, and so have I. And if you’ve known a lot of cats too, then you know that each cat has her own unique and magical story. Cats I’ve Known captures that sentiment in an honest and heartfelt style, paired with beautiful illustrations. ”—Lil BUB
"Readers are sure to find at least one cat among those featured whose story and antics appeal or bring back memories of their own feline encounters. The conversational narrative fits well with the relaxed mood of the stories." —Library Journal
"The best entry centers on Trixie, a “little black cat” who lived with the author for 14 years; Haegele offers a loving personality sketch and tribute to her longtime feline companion filled with quirky details such as how she used to tape bird photo “pin-ups” near Trixie’s favorite lounging spot." —Publishers Weekly
"Sometimes, the cats are the stars, and sometimes, they're just bit players. Through them we meet Haegele's friends and family, her Philly neighborhoods (wonderful evocations here of life on the block), and her world of DIY bookmaking, 'zine conventions, reading tours, essays, poetry, funky bookstores, bars, and rock shows. ... Haegele has a humorous, self-deprecating voice ("I walked quietly, my mind full of nonsense as always"), conversational, then - blam! - the arresting image (one house is "loud with silence") or clause ("that dirty kind of longing you feel when you don't get to make peace with something"). ... Cats teach us about death, grief, longing, the solitary life, and the fugitive nature of contentment. Cats are connected to love, disappointment, loss, and frustration. ... This book liberally shares her pleasure and gratitude for them." —Philadelphia Inquirer
Out & About
Joe and Katie Walk Around Philly
My husband Joe and I love to go for long walks around the city. In this book we share our favorite walking routes with you and include a map, directions, and our personal commentary with each one.
We began work on the book in February 2020, and when our lives were upended just a month later, the project began to feel like a chronicle of the dramatic changes we’ve been experiencing in our world and city since then. When the quarantine first started, a lot of the things we most loved to do were no longer possible. No dance parties, no concerts, no visits with friends. But one thing we could still do is take our walks. First thing in the morning, late in the evening, on large streets that have been closed to car traffic, in the city’s huge park system—much of which is wooded—or on poky little residential blocks: Our walks have been there for us, helping us strengthen our bodies and soothe our hearts. Come join us as we take in the wild, wooly, wonderful city of Philadelphia.
Out and About is full-color, 100 pages long, and includes 15 walks. It’s fully illustrated by artist Ally Shwed, whose gorgeous hand-drawn maps make the book as charming as it is useful.
“This is just a charming little book. I put up money for its kickstarter and I am glad I did. This is a collection of walks around Philadelphia, but what makes it great is that both of them write commentary on each of the walks. The book is well designed and quite a hopeful little thing.”
—David Macpherson