"We all have our own bits of everyday magic." @mxfaylitahicks.bsky.social on Spirit-Led Writing: Ritual, Ritualization & the Creative Process rn @ Off Campus Writers' Workshop. #WritingCommunity #amwriting ocww.info

M is for A MAP OF MY WANT by @mxfaylitahicks.bsky.social (@haymarketbooks.org 2024) “The highway swells like tide and I lie awake..." From “ASMR Sleepcast: The Night After Being Released from the Hays County Jail" (first appeared in @yalereview.bsky.social ) www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2218-a...

Applications for @storystudiochicago.bsky.social's, sixth annual StoryBoard conference are now OPEN! Spend a week studying with one of these 8 amazing instructors -- either in-person or online -- in August. Apply are here: www.storystudiochicago.org/storyboard-c... #writingcommunity

Fall reading from @haymarketbooks.org: Azadi, Arundhati Roy Revolution Today, Susan Buck-Morss A Map of My Want, @mxfaylitahicks.bsky.social

At some point, I became one of those people who gets excited when a new data report drops. I literally just got a glass of water, some snacks, and snuggled in place to read a new report related to my research. What is this?!

Congrats to Acre author @mxfaylitahicks.bsky.social! 🎉🎉🎉

Mx. Faylita Hicks@mxfaylitahicks.bsky.social · last yr.

I did a thing! My second poetry collection, A MAP OF MY WANT (@haymarketbooks) won the Midwest Book Award for Poetry!

I did a thing! My second poetry collection, A MAP OF MY WANT (@haymarketbooks) won the Midwest Book Award for Poetry!

I know it’s been a minute. Slowly but surely making my way back over here!

Delighted to see two Acre authors celebrated for their contributions to literary Chicago! Congrats @thejs3.bsky.social (DEFIANT ACTS) and @mxfaylitahicks.bsky.social (HOODWITCH)! 🎉🎉🎉 lit.newcity.com/2025/06/04/l...

Lit 50 2025: Institutions, Advocates and Programmers | Newcity Lit

Forty years ago, the first Printers Row Lit Fest was staged in the canyon between the old printing houses on Dearborn Street. To commemorate these forty years and to honor our literary community, we a...

lit.newcity.com

So excited to tell you about Ragdale’s annual fundraiser, More Than a Novel Affair, which I co-curated… It’s two days: Friday May 16 and Saturday May 17. If you’re in Chicago, FRIDAY’S event is more convenient: It’ll be at the Newberry Library (in partnership with @storystudiochicago.bsky.social) 🧵

It features five seriously amazing authors (@kazimali.bsky.social, @jamiattenberg.bsky.social, Xochitl Gonzalez, Chigozie Obioma, and Claire Lombardo). They’ll be in conversation—moderated by the wonderful @mxfaylitahicks.bsky.social—about making space for art and finding your voice.

You hussle your whole life looking for a way into the light only to find yourself already glowing. I hope you keep reaching—your time is coming. I promise.

I’m not at AWP this year but I’m internet lurking during my trip to NYC. 👀

Congratulations to Acre author @mxfaylitahicks.bsky.social (HOODWITCH)! 🎉🎉🎉

Haymarket Books@haymarketbooks.org · last yr.

Faylita Hicks (@mxfaylitahicks.bsky.social) is a 2025 Writing Freedom Fellow. Hicks integrates transformative justice theory with creative practice in their writing. They are the author of two poetry collections. Listen to them read from their forthcoming memoir:

Leaning all the way into spirit’s gift of transformation, today! Grace and gratitude to the teams at The Mellon Foundation and @haymarketbooks.org. Grace and gratitude to my readers. Grace and gratitude to my people and my people’s people. May the light find us always.

Haymarket Books@haymarketbooks.org · last yr.

Faylita Hicks (@mxfaylitahicks.bsky.social) is a 2025 Writing Freedom Fellow. Hicks integrates transformative justice theory with creative practice in their writing. They are the author of two poetry collections. Listen to them read from their forthcoming memoir:

Applications for @storystudiochicago.bsky.social's, sixth annual StoryBoard conference are now OPEN! Spend a week studying with one of these 8 amazing instructors -- either in-person or online -- in August. Apply are here: www.storystudiochicago.org/storyboard-c... #writingcommunity

I need y'all to sit with this headline and understand what is being done to our community. They're trying to criminalize our very existence. This is a campaign of eradication. www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/rcna...

My millennial lover archetype according to the nostalgic trip I just went on via YouTube: 1/3 Travie McCoy 1/3 Lauryn Hill 1/3 Vin Diesel Explains the last 20 years. 🤣🫠

As an astro-spiritualist, I’m oddly hopeful. I’ve documented signs of the nation’s fall for years, so this moment doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is this sudden knowing that after we bring a stop to the oligarchy—we could be the ones to construct a new and more empathetic constitution.

🙌🏾🔥🙌🏾

Just secured my first solo art exhibition. Coming to Chicago Summer 2026. 🙌🏾🔥🙌🏾🔥🙌🏾

An American flag built on the backs of Black people... Black music protesting white political terror in registers they never hear; reminiscent of ancestral spirituals embedded with instructions for runaways All this in New Orleans... What a moment

I feel like way too many people forget the role art and music has played in helping us fight against the most egregious of acts throughout history. We need the artists to keep making. The musicians to keep making. Writers to keep writing. The creatives keep our stories and bring us forward.

"where are all the protests?" read our series showing the legacy of both the Trump and Biden admins—from BLM in the 2010s, to Standing Rock, to George Floyd, to the Palestine encampments—as protest suppression and criminalization. politicians want to call blocking traffic and masking "terrorism."

Welcome to the United States of Suppression

Our new series documents the recent crackdown on dissent and protests in the U.S.

teenvogue.com

I feel like we must remind people that laws are really just community agreements. The minute a large enough collective stops agreeing, we’ve got a problem. Trump’s administration is trying to reinterpret the Constitution—but the reason it even exists is because of someone like him. Look familiar?

The funding pause orders "are actually the most lawless, brazen, unconstitutional actions that this administration has yet taken, and if sanctioned by a conservative Supreme Court, they would amount to a full disbanding of our system of government." From @ddayen.bsky.social:

Trump’s Most Lawless Action Yet

Pausing funds appropriated by Congress is a deliberate taunt to draw a legal challenge that the White House’s most radical architects think will give them unilateral spending power.

prospect.org

Early-career literary translators, here is a grant for you! You could apply for it and get some help bringing a precious translation baby into this world!

Words Without Borders Announces Third Annual Momentum Grant for Early-Career Translators - Words Without Borders

This grant aims to support early-career translators seeking to bring international work into the English-language marketplace.

wordswithoutborders.org

These little privileges my generation’s enjoyed—the comfort in our imaginings of a real full-throated freedom just around the corner—is now under attack. Has been under attack. I am not shocked. I am incited.

"A recent study by the Prison Policy Initiative found that the median income of Black men before incarceration was $17,500 per year, compared to $39,000 for white men, further emphasizing economic disparities."