Faylita Hicks

Faylita Hicks (she/they) is a poet, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural strategist working at the intersection of spirituality, justice, and creative practice. 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. 

Hicks is the author of A Map of My Want (Haymarket Books, 2024), winner of the 2025 Midwest Book Award in the general Poetry category, and 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. 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. Their work has been anthologized in Poemhood: Our Black Revival (HarperCollins, 2024), Mid/South Sonnets (Belle Pointe Press, 2023), The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood (University of Georgia Press, 2022), and When There Are Nine (Moon Tide Press, 2022)

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. 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. They 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.