Faylita Hicks

FAYLITA HICKS (she/they) is a queer multi-genre writer, interdisciplinary artist, Hoodoo practitioner, and cultural strategist working at the crossroads of social justice and spirituality. Author of A Map of My Want (Haymarket Books, 2024), a 2024 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Award shortlist finalist, HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), a 2020 Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry shortlist finalist, and the debut memoir-in-essays, A Body of Wild Light: The Fall and Rise of an American Poet (Haymarket, 2027), Hicks is a 2025 Haymarket Writing Freedom Fellow, a 2024 Gwendolyn Brooks Living Legacy Honoree, a 2024 Chicago Reader’s Best Poet shortlist finalist, a 2023 Illinois Humanity’s Envisioning Justice Awardee, a 2022 Art for Justice Fund Awardee, and the winner of the 2021 Sappho Poetry Award and Best of Net Prize for Poetry. She was the solo performer in the nationally touring production of Your Healing Is Killing Me and was a featured spoken word recording artist on a Grammy-nominated album in 2024. Hicks holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Reno and is the recipient of several fellowships and residencies from Black Mountain Institute, Broadway Advocacy Coalition, the Center for Art and Advocacy, Lambda Literary, Tin House, and others.

She currently serves as Board Chair for The Guild Literary Complex, Core Faculty in Poetry with StoryStudio, adjunct faculty with the University of Reno’s Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Incline Village, and is a voting member of the Recording Academy. She currently lives, dreams, and creates in Chicago, IL.

Visit their site at WWW.FaylitaHicks.com