Background
Recent Work
Radical Sharing dialogue at The Long Now with Bette Adriaanse
Visual art and spoken poem sequences in ‘A Bridge Over the Ocean’ by Francis Fourcou
Excerpt from WALEZE / MARKINGS on the cover of World Literature Today, with the poem “i want you to help us talk,” in the magazine
Wahzhazhe ie tarot deck, 𐓣͘ 𐓧𐓺 “rock marking” / 𐓧𐓺 being short for 𐓷𐓘𐓧𐓟𐓺𐓟 (commissioned work)
Osage Reconnection Zine Open Mic Night + Panel on Wahzhazhe Poetics
Opened the EMPOWERED 2023 Indigenous Fashion Show for Weomepe
Walking for J. Okuma and Patricia Michaels in the SWAIA 2023 Fashion Show
Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry, Summer 2023
Installation in the front window of She Makes Art at Liggett Studio
Ancestral Land Tour for A Calm & Normal Heart: Stories (Unnamed Press)
Excerpt from WALEZE / MARKINGS in the Bookshelf Residency: Gato Negro & Phoneme Media at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Panelist, Osage Women Creatives in Conversation: Navigating Osage Stories at the Osage Nation Museum
“The Novels of Momaday” in The Paris Review
“Lana, or the Wazhazhe ie word for ‘guilt’” in The Audacity
“Khadijah Britton Is Still Missing” in Indian Country Today
Visiting Artist, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Education
Institute of American Indian Arts, MFA in creative writing, 2020
University of California at Davis, MA in English, 2017
University of Virginia, BA with distinction in English, 2012
Bio
Chelsea T. Hicks (she/they) is a model, author and text-based experimental visual artist. She was awarded the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award in 2023, and her writing has been published in Poetry, McSweeney’s, World Literature Today, Yellow Medicine Review, the LA Review of Books, Indian Country Today, the Believer, The Audacity, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She is a past Writing By Writers Fellow, a 2016 Wah-Zha-Zhi Woman Artist featured by the Osage Nation Museum, a 2020 finalist for the Eliza So Fellowship for Native American women writers, a Native Arts & Cultures Foundation 2021 LIFT Awardee, and a 2022-2023 Tulsa Artist Fellow. Her first book A Calm & Normal Heart was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut short story collection. She is a current recipient of the Artistic Innovations grant from the Mid America Arts Alliance. She is bisexual.
Her advocacy work has included recruiting with the Virginia Indian Pre-College Outreach Initiative (VIP-COI), Northern and Southern California Osage diaspora groups, and heritage language creative writing and revitalization workshops. She authored poetry for the sound art collection Onomatopoeias For Wrangell-St. Elias, funded by the Double Hoo Grant at the University of Virginia, where she was awarded the Peter & Phyllis Pruden scholarship for excellence in the English major as well as the University Achievement Award (2008-2012). The Ford Foundation awarded her a 2021 honorable mention for promotion of Indigenous-language creative writing. She organizes Indigenous language creative writing gatherings in Tulsa funded by the Mid America Arts Alliance, and directs the associated 501c3 organization Words of the People.
Beginnings
Chelsea T. Hicks grew up mostly in Virginia, with summer stays in Bartlesville, Oklahoma at her iko’s (or grandmother’s house) during the Wazhazhe June dances, the I^loshka. After graduating from the University of Virginia on a full scholarship, she worked for several years as a journalist and in newsrooms.
In 2015, she moved to San Francisco and attended UC Davis while playing in bands around the SF Bay Area. After graduating with a creative/critical Master’s of Arts in English, she attended the Institute of American Indian Arts’ low-residency creative writing program and moved back to her tribal district of Pawhuska, Oklahoma where she taught at the Osage Nation’s language-focused tribal school while earning her MFA. The impact of learning her ancestral language of Wahzhazhe ie has influenced her to organize language-focused creative writing programs in Tulsa, Oklahoma where she directs Words of the People, an organization focused on normalizing creative work in Indigenous languages.
She is Wahzhazhe, of Pawhuska District, belonging to the Tsizho Washtake through her father Brian Hicks. She is a descendant of Ogeese Captain, Cyprian Tayrien, Rosalie Captain Chouteau, Chief Pawhuska I, and her iko Betty Elsey Hicks, who was an original Osage allottee. She is a proud citizen of the Osage Nation: Wahzhazhe sho^sho^we, 𐓷𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟 𐓯𐓪͘𐓯𐓪͘𐓷𐓟, always Osage.