Cult Classic: The Thousand Oaks Youth Ranch in Corsicana, Texas  

Faylita Hicks is a queer Afro-Latinx multi-disciplinary artist, writer, hoodoo practitioner, and cultural strategist advocating for people directly impacted by the carceral system. An Art for Justice Fund grantee, voting member of the Recording Academy, and winner of the 2020 Sappho Poetry Award from Palette Poetry, they are the author of A Map of My Want (Haymarket Books, 2024) and HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry. Currently based in Chicago, they are working on their forthcoming memoir about their pretrial incarceration, A Body of Wild Light (Haymarket Books, 2026), their next contemporary jazz-infused spoken word album, and a digitally immersive performance piece tentatively entitled The Echoes.