Faylita Hicks Master Class Recording

Prize-winning poet and spoken word artist Faylita Hicks gave a special master class for us on 27 February 2022 moderated by Laura Wetherington. The class focused on Faylita’s debut poetry collection HoodWitch. In speaking about their aspirations for the collection, Faylita described it as “a statement about black spirituality, about transformation, about queerness and being non-binary and what it means to me to be nonbinary.”

The class covered topics such as:

Combining advocacy and poetry
Exploring big questions and abstract ideas in a way that’s accessible
Writing across different forms and genres
Reading for an audience & much more.

HoodWitch was published by Acre Books in 2019. You can get it in paperback from the publisher, Bookshop.org, Book Depository or also in ebook form from bol.com, Kobo, and most other major retailers. Faylita’s album A New Name for My Love is available on most streaming platforms.

ABOUT THESE TEACHERS
Faylita Hicks (she/they) is the winner of Palette Poetry’s 2020 Sappho Prize, and HoodWitch was a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry, the 2019 Balcones Poetry Prize, and the 2019 Julie Suk Award. Hicks is the former Editor-in-Chief of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and the current Editor-in-Chief of Black Femme Collective. Their work has been featured in Adroit, Kenyon Review, Poetry Magazine, Slate, Vox, and many others. Hicks holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Sierra Nevada University and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from Tin House, Lambda Literary, Civil Rights Corps, and the Black Mountain Institute among others. They were a member of the IWC’s Level III poetry course.

Laura Wetherington (she/her) is the author of Parallel Resting Places (Parlor Press 2021), which was awarded the 2020 New Measure Prize by Peter Gizzi. Laura’s earlier collection, A Map Predetermined and Chance (Fence Books), was selected by C.S. Giscombe for the National Poetry Series. Her poems have been featured by Poem-A-Day, the Colorado Review, and The Normal School, among many others. Laura is the poetry editor at Baobab Press. She teaches creative writing at Amsterdam University College and poetry classes at the International Writers’ Collective.