A Map of My Want

From the critically acclaimed author of HoodWitch, Faylita Hicks's second collection explores the question, Where do our desires take us?

An offspring of Audre Lorde's seminal essay "Uses of the Erotic," Hicks's A Map of My Want follows a nonbinary femme as they explore the sensual intersection of the personal and the political, a crossroads to which their sexual liberation brought them after their escape from a religious cult. Lyrically, Hicks interprets the US Declaration of Independence's infamous "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for themselves. Combining storytelling with Western astrology, this poetry collection is an intimate erotic spell through which Hicks conjures joy as they develop an alternate theory on how to attain happiness--through ecstatic healing.

Faylita Hicks (she/they) is a queer Afro-Latinx writer, spoken word artist, and cultural strategist. 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. The former Editor-in-Chief of Black Femme Collective and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Hicks has also received 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 published in or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Ecotone, Kenyon Review, and Yale Review, amongst others.