Skip to main content

Shelley Puhak

Biography

Shelley Puhak

Shelley Puhak is a critically acclaimed poet and writer whose work has appeared in the Atlantic, Lapham’s Quarterly, Teen Vogue, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere. Her essays have been included in The Best American Travel Writing and selected as Notables in four consecutive editions of The Best American Essays. She is the author of two works of nonfiction --- THE DARK QUEENS and THE BLOOD COUNTESS --- and two books of poetry, most recently GUINEVERE IN BALTIMORE, winner of the Anthony Hecht Prize. She lives in Maryland. 

Shelley Puhak

Books by Shelley Puhak

The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster
by Shelley Puhak - History, Nonfiction, True Crime

There have long been whispers, coming from the castle; from the village square; from the dark woods. The great lady --- a countess, from one of Europe's oldest families --- is a vicious killer. When the king's men force their way into her manor house, she is caught murdering yet another of her maids. She is walled up in a tower and never seen again, except in the uppermost barred window, where she curses all those who dared speak up against her. Told and retold in many languages, the legend of the Blood Countess has consumed cultural imaginations around the world. But despite claims that Elizabeth Bathory tortured and killed as many as 650 girls, some have wondered if the Countess was herself a victim --- of one of the most successful disinformation campaigns known to history. So was Elizabeth Bathory a monster, a victim, or a bit of both?

The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World
by Shelley Puhak - History, Nonfiction

In sixth-century Merovingian France, Brunhild and her sister-in-law, Fredegund, were iron-willed strategists who reigned over vast realms, changing the face of Europe. The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. They fought a decades-long civil war --- against each other. With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne's empire. Yet after the queens' deaths, their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend. In THE DARK QUEENS, Shelley Puhak sets the record straight.