Wicked Women is an illustrated collection of poems told from the perspective of history’s most hated women. Everyone has heard stories of Lizzie Borden, the Blood Countess, the Black Widow, and the Pirate Queens—stories of their wicked deeds, wanton ways, and wretched manners. But in a world where men are the monster-makers, what makes women evil? What truths linger behind the sensational stories that have come to define them? And what, if anything, do we owe these women for daring to do the unthinkable?

Wicked Women imagines a world in which women are defined not by the opinion of the men who wrote their legends but through their own words. Witches, serial killers, gangsters, shoplifters, pirates, con-women, and evil queens—the world loves to label women who misbehave, but what if the villains in question wrote their own tales? And what if, this time, history listened?