WORKSHOP | Walking the Middle Path: Using Hoodoo to Tell Your Story

If your goal is to get over that writer’s block and finally tell your story–hoodoo can help! Participants will walk away with a basic understanding of how to read tarot, how to pull information from oracles, astrology, and herbs in relation to their creative writing project, and how to respectfully engage hoodoo practices when running into narrative blocks in their work.

Participants will need to bring their own notebook and writing utensil to this workshop.

—

BIO

FAYLITA HICKS (she/they) is a queer Afro-Latinx writer, spoken word artist, and cultural strategist. A prolific creative and previously incarcerated artist, Hicks’ is known for their dynamic storytelling methods and compelling narrative arcs. Using poetry, prose, music, video, and live performances—they explore the evolution of personal and national identity, the cyclical nature of grief, the spiritual applications of quantum physics, decolonized eroticism/sensuality, and manifesting personal liberation. Hicks is an Artivist: someone who integrates transformative justice theory into their creative practice, using much of their work to advocate for the lives of marginalized people who make up our global majority. 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.

Based in Chicago, IL, Hicks is the author of the critically-acclaimed debut poetry collection 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. They are currently working on their second collection, A Map of My Want (Haymarket Books, 2024) and a debut memoir about their carceral experience A Body of Wild Light(Haymarket Books, 2025). Both books are supported in part by grants, fellowships, residencies, and awards from the Art for Justice, Black Mountain Institute, Tin House, and The Right of Return USA. The former Editor-in-Chief of Black Femme Collective and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Hicks is a voting member of the Recording Academy/GRAMMYs and its Songwriters and Composers Committee for the Texas Chapter. Hicks is also the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Tony-Award winning Broadway Advocacy Coalition, Civil Rights Corps, Lambda Literary, and Texas After Violence Project. Their poetry, essays, and digital art have been featured in American Poetry Review, Ecotone, Kenyon Review, Longreads, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, Poetry Magazine, Slate, Split This Rock, Texas Observer, The Slowdown Podcast, and Yale Review, amongst others. 

Born in Gardena, California, they were raised in Central Texas where they received their MFA in Creative Writing from Sierra Nevada College’s Low Residency Program and founded their creative services LLC, Infinite. Creative. Lit.