13 Days of Baba Yaga: Ask Baba Yaga

The shuttering of Jezebel has prompted a slew of essays from readers who loved the site and from writers who got their start there. This Gawker project was part of a tiny—but influential—wave of websites created by and for women that functioned as a kind of digital complement to magazines like Bitch and Bust and a counterpoint to mainstream fashion mags. The Toast and The Hairpin were part of that tiny—but powerful—wave.

It occurs to me that if you’re reading this, you probably knew all that.

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Anyhow, one of my favorite recurring features on The Hairpin was Ask Baba Yaga. I found the paradoxical mix of brutal realism and transcendent magic beautiful and—now that I think about it—prescient. Like The Hairpin, Ask Baba Yaga is no more, although two compendiums of Baba Yaga’s wisdom are still in print, and her guidance seems to me to be perfectly suited to this moment we’re living in now.

Taisia Kitaiskaia is the writer who created these columns. I thought about asking her to channel Baba Yaga one more time for the first issue of Croning. Then I realized that this was kind of a bullshit ask— Kitaiskaia would still be serving as the voice of Baba Yaga if she wanted to—and I discovered a gorgeous poem that I wanted more.

I am absolutely thrilled that this poem will be reprinted on the pages of Croning.

This is a friendly reminder that the Baba Yaga Issue of Croning is available as a preorder. I was thinking that maybe I would get 50 issues printed, but we’re almost there with preorders alone. I am beyond grateful. Preordering now ensures that you get our Baba Yaga trading card and a discount. It also helps me calculate how many print copies I should order.

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