Faylita Hicks

Faylita Hicks (she/her/they/them) is a queer Afro-Latinx activist, writer, and interdisciplinary artist born in Gardena, CA, but raised in Central Texas. They are the former editor-in-chief of the Austin-based literary journal Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, a 2020-2022 Texas Touring Artist, and the author of HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry, the 2019 Balcones Poetry Prize, and the 2019 Julie Suk Award. The winner of Palette Poetry’s 2020 Sappho Prize, they have been awarded fellowships and residencies from Tin House, Lambda Literary, Jack Jones Literary Arts, Broadway Advocacy, and the Right of Return USA, the first fellowship designed exclusively for previously incarcerated artists.

Their work is anthologized in The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood and When There Are Nine. Hicks' poems, essays, op-eds, and more, have been featured in Adroit, American Poetry Review, the Cincinnati Review, F(r)iction, HuffPost, Kenyon Review, Longreads, Palette Poetry, Poetry Magazine, The Rumpus, Slate, Texas Monthly, Texas Observer, VIDA Review, and others. Hicks received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.