Brink Literacy Project Launches The Impressive Looking ‘The Literary Tarot’ On Kickstarter

Tarot cards are definitely a thing. And I can only see a bright future for The Literary Tarot card collection by the Brink Literacy Project that debuted this week on Kickstarter.

For those who don’t know, the Brink Literacy Project is “a nonprofit organization dedicated to changing the world through storytelling” that has called up a great deal of big names from the world of comic books and beyond to help make this campaign a reality:

“This is an ambitious and unusual collaboration with some of the greatest authors and cartoonists of our time who have been asked to pair a tarot card with a seminal book that embodies the meaning of the arcana. Working with the storytellers and a diverse and talented art team, Brink Literacy Project has tapped into the magic of classic literature to bring a whole new kind of tarot deck to life.” 

Needless to say all proceeds from this campaign will go to the ongoing work done by the Brink Literacy Project. A worthy cause, yes, but you may want to buy I because of the sheer array of talent this organization has managed to get involved.

For the Major Arcana card pairings the following creators from the worlds of comics and literature we have the following:

• Bestselling crime writer Chelsea Cain pairs The Emperor with Agatha Christie’s Poirot Investigates

• PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novelist K-Ming Chang (Bestiary) pairs The Magician with Wu Cheng’en’s sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West

• Amal El-Mohtar (author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning novella This Is How You Lose the Time War) pairs The Star with Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Emily of the New Moon

• Lev Grossman (The Magicians Trilogy) pairs The World with King Arthur

• Guggenheim Fellowship recipient Victor LaValle (The Changeling) pairs The Tower with H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Outsider”

• Talia Lavin (the author of Cultural Warlords and the host of the Moby Dick Energy podcast) pairs The Devil with Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

• Isaac Marion (the author of the bestselling Warm Bodies series) pairs The Hermit with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

• Bestselling Mexican Gothic novelist Silvia Moreno-Garcia pairs The Lovers with Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence

• The bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng, pairs The Hanged Man with T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

• Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Award-winning novelist Rebecca Roanhorse (Black Sun) pairs Death with Bram Stoker’s Dracula

• Quill Award-winning novelist Patrick Rothfuss (The Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy) pairs The Fool with Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote

• Simon Tolkien (No Man’s Land: A Novel) pairs The Chariot with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island

• Novelist and comic book writer G. Willow Wilson (The Bird King) pairs the Wheel of Fortune with William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.

Still with us? Good, then I’ll continue with listing the writers involved with the Minor Arcana Pairings:

• Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning writer Charlie Jane Anders (Victories Greater Than Death) pairs the Knight of Light (Cups) with Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones

• Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale) pairs the Queen of Light (Cups) with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

• Vita Ayala (The Wilds) pairs the King of Light (Cups) with Homer’s The Odyssey

• Bestselling author Leigh Bardugo (Ninth House and Shadow and Bone) pairs the Ace of Parchment (Pentacles) with Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden

• Tarot reader and host of The Word Witch Podcast Charlie Claire Burgess pairs the Eight of Quills (Swords) with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper

• Kelly Sue DeConnick (co-creator and writer of Bitch Planet) pairs the King of Quills (Swords) with Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations

• Bestselling writer Roxane Gay (The Bad Feminist) pairs the King of Parchment (Pentacles) with Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray

• The Hugo Award-winning writer of Die, Kieron Gillen, pairs Five of Quills (Swords) with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

• Bestselling horror writer Stephen Graham Jones (The Only Good Indians) pairs the Three of Quills (Swords) with W. W. Jacobs’s seminal, supernatural short story “The Monkey’s Paw”

• Hart Hanson (creator of the TV series Bones and author of the novel The Driver) pairs the Page of Ink (Wands) with Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain

• Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning writer Kelly Link (Get in Trouble) pairs the Two of Parchment (Pentacles) with Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

• The award winning writer of Monstress, Marjorie Liu pairs the Queen of Quills (Swords) with Beowulf

• Bestselling comic book writer Mark Millar (Jupiter’s Legacy) pairs the Ace of Quills (Swords) with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

• Erin Morgenstern (The Starless Sea) pairs the Five of Light (Cups) with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

• Novelist and biographer Alec Nevala-Lee pairs the Two of Quills (Swords) with Sophocles’s tragedy Antigone

• Novelist and comic book writer Benjamin Percy (The Ninth Metal) pairs the Seven of Quills (Swords) with Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat

• Bestselling comic book writer Mark Waid (Kingdom Come) pairs the Page of Quills (Swords) with Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

The artists for Literary Tarot are:

• Major Arcana: Samantha Dow

• Light: Shan Bennion 

• Ink and Box Design: Ejiwa “Edge” Ebenebe 

• Quills: Isabel Burke 

• Parchment: Bradley Clayton 

For more on this interesting new take on the Tarot card deck, a sneak peek at some of the cards and more, why not check out the full campaign here now, and keep up to date with future announcements?