Faylita Hicks

Faylita Hicks (she/they) is the author of HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry, the 2019 Julie Suk Award, and the 2019 Balcones Poetry Prize. A queer Afro-Latinx activist, writer, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural strategist, Hicks was born in south-central California, raised in central Texas, and is now based in Chicago. They are the former editor and chief of Black Femme Collective and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review. Their poetry, essays, and interviews have been published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day newsletter, The Adroit Journal, The American Poetry Review, AfroPunk, Ecotone, Foglifter, The Kenyon Review, Poetry magazine, and other publications. Throughout their career, Hicks has used their intersectional experiences to advocate for the rights of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people by interpreting policy’s impact on the individual.

Hicks is the recipient of support from the Art for Justice Fund, the Black Mountain Institute, the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, the Civil Rights Corps, Lambda Literary, the Texas After Violence Project, Tin House, and the Right of Return USA. Their work has been anthologized in Poemhood: Our Black Revival (Harper Collins, 2024), Mid/South Sonnets (Belle Pointe Press, 2023), The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood (University of Georgia Press, 2022), When There Are Nine (Moon Tide Press, 2022), and other collections. Hicks’s sixth spoken word album, A New Name for My Love, was released independently in 2021 in support of the #EndTheException campaign led by Worth Rises. Hicks is an inaugural member of the Center for Art and Advocacy, which supports previously incarcerated emerging and established writers and artists from around the United States.