Biography
Faylita Hicks (they/them) is a poet and creative nonfiction writer born in Gardena, California, and raised in Central Texas. They integrate transformative justice theory with creative practice. Through personal narratives, they explore themes of carcerality, life and death, identity, quantum philosophy, spirituality, memory, and ecopoetics.
The author of A Map of My Want (Haymarket Books) and HoodWitch (Acre Books), a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry, Hicks is currently working on a debut memoir-in-essays about their incarceration, A Body of Wild Light: The Fall and Rise of An American Poet forthcoming from Haymarket Books, Hicks is a Right of Return Fellow, a Grammy-nominee, and the winner of the 2020 Sappho Poetry Award.
Currently, Hicks serves as board chair for the Guild Literary Complex, as well as core faculty with Story Studio, Chicago. They are adjunct faculty with University of Nevada, Reno’s Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing program, and an alumni consultant at the Center for Art and Advocacy. Hicks is a District Advocate with the Recording Academy/GRAMMYs. Their poetry, essays, and op-eds were a part of the successful 2019–2020 campaign to change citation-based policy in San Marcos, Texas, and their text-based art was featured in Ford Foundation group exhibit, “No Justice Without Love” in New York. Hicks currently lives, creates, and dreams in Chicago, Illinois.
