CHELSEA T. HICKS
Reclaiming indigenous stories through poetic craft, her work transforms tradition into lyrical art.
CHELSEA T. HICKS - 𐓸𐓶𐓟𐓰𐓫͘ / LookingtoEagle
Description of Art
Hicks multi-genre writing work includes short stories, poems, essays, and novels as well as traditional Wahzhazhe crafting to keep her grounded. Ancestral stories and veneration are recurrent themes in her writing, as well as generational trauma and the methods by which generations heal and also fail to heal. She has also lead the band Museums in San Francisco, and studies traditional Wazhazhe craft practices such as shawl-making and moccasin-making as a method of grounding and support for her writing work. Her first book is a collection of short stories incorporating poems in Wahzhazhe ie, forthcoming in 2022 from Unnamed Press in Los Angeles. Hicks’ writing has also been published in McSweeney’s, Indian Country Today, Yellow Medicine Review, the Rumpus, the Believer, the LA Review of Books, the Paris Review, and elsewhere.
Artist Biography
Hicks is a writer living in the Bay Area in California after she earned an MA at UC Davis and an MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts in creative writing. She began studying Wazhazhe ie for her iko, or “grandmother,” and will return to Oklahoma as a Tulsa Artist Fellow in 2022, to offer creative writing workshops for writers using indigenous languages. Hicks studies Wazhazhe ie with mentors of her tribal district, Waxakaoli^, and has worked at the Osage Nation’s language-focused school Daposka Ahnkodapi. She belongs to the Tsizho Washtake, through her father Brian Hicks, and in Wazhazhe ie she is Xhuedoi^ or “Looking to the Eagle.” Centering language study in her writing has allowed her to address trends of healing and cultural revitalization for modern day Natives in her writing. She was raised in Suffolk, Virginia and during the summers in Bartlesville, Oklahoma with her iko.
