Faylita Hicks (she/they) is the author of HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry, the forthcoming poetry collection A Map of My Want (Haymarket Books, 2024), and the debut memoir about their carceral experiences, A Body of Wild Light (Haymarket Books, 2025). Hicks is also the recipient of fellowships and residencies from Black Mountain Institute, the Tony-Award winning Broadway Advocacy Coalition, Civil Rights Corps, Lambda Literary, Texas After Violence Project, Tin House, and the Right of Return USA. Faylita is also a recipient of Art for Justice’s New Visions for Shared Safety grant, allowing them to create work that envisions a world without mass incarceration. A voting member of the Recording Academy/GRAMMYs, Hicks’ poetry, essays, spoken word, and digital art has been published in or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Ecotone, Kenyon Review, Longreads, Poetry, Slate, The Slowdown Podcast, and Yale Review, among others. Their personal account of their time in pretrial incarceration in Hays County is featured in the ITVS Independent Lens 2019 documentary 45 Days in a Texas Jail, and the Brave New Films 2021 documentary narrated by Mahershala Ali, Racially Charged: America’s Misdemeanor Problem.
Faylita Hicks