Faylita Hicks (pronouns: she/her/they) is a black queer writer. She was a finalist in the 2018 PEN American Writing for Justice Fellowship and the 2018 Cosmonauts Avenue Annual Poetry Prize. Her debut book, HoodWitch, is forthcoming in October 2019 with Acre Books. The 2009 Grand Slam Champion of the Austin Poetry Slam and member of the hip-hop collective Grid Squid Entertainment, her poetry and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming in Slate, Huffington Post, The Texas Observer, POETRY, Kweli Journal, Cincinnati Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Lunch Ticket, Matador Review, and elsewhere. She received her MFA in creative writing from Sierra Nevada College’s low-residency program and lives in San Marcos, Texas where she is working on her memoir.