POET. CEREMONIAL ARTIST. CULTURAL ARCHITECT.

Witness The Work.

Faylita Hicks is a poet, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural architect whose practice synthesizes Hoodoo, quantum philosophy, and transformative justice into a singular creative and spiritual framework.

A MAP OF MY WANT

Faylita Hicks

Poetry

Haymarket Books, 2024

Winner of the 2025 Midwest Book Award for Poetry

Winner of the 2025 Chicago Writers Association’s Book of the Year Award for Poetry

Finalist for the 2024 Chicago Review of Books Award for Poetry

What a gift it is
to not live, always, in between here or there;
to not be overcome with the limitlessness
of need.
— from "Coasting"

Most creative guidance treats the work and the spirit as two separate problems — and that separation is exactly where artists lose the thread.

With over twenty years of experience as a writer, interdisciplinary artist, ceremonialist, educator, and cultural architect, I bring the craft, the strategy, the ancestral wisdom, and the oracular vision into one practice. If you are a writer, a visionary, or an institution ready for guidance that can hold the full weight of what you are building, this is where we begin.

Rooted practice, lasting presence.

  • The literary foundation of the practice.

    I write poems, essays, hybrid texts, and commissioned works for individuals and institutions — including the Ford Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Center for Art and Advocacy, Illinois Humanities, and Civil Rights Corps — work that is built to last, built to be spoken aloud, and built to hold what ordinary language leaves behind.

  • Not every moment has language for it — but it still needs to be marked.

    I design and perform durational poetry ceremonies, site-specific installations, and bespoke rituals for individuals, couples, museums, cultural institutions, and community gatherings — creating sacred containers for collective witnessing, healing, and transformative public experience. Recent ceremonial work includes Illinois Humanities, Walls Turned Sideways Gallery Chicago, and the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

  • The threshold between the work you have and the career you were always meant to build.

    Through The Craft Career Studio, I offer spirit-grounded, justice-centered editorial counsel and career architecture — manuscript assessment, developmental editing, submission strategy, grant and fellowship guidance, and astro-informed timing — for writers and artists who are ready to stop waiting and start moving. Past clients have placed work with literary journals, independent presses, and major publishing houses

  • Some questions are too deep for strategy alone.

    Through my Quantum Oracular Practice — a living synthesis of Hoodoo, astrology, tarot, neuroscience, and indigenous healing — I offer one-on-one consultation that treats your spiritual intelligence not as a supplement to your creative and professional life, but as its most vital resource.