Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi is a Black mother who writes.
Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Texas Observer, Entropy, The Boiler, Anthropology Now, Bearing the Mask, and elsewhere. She is a fellow of the Pink Door Writing Retreat and the Anaphora Arts Writing Residency. The author of two chapbooks, Moon Woman (Thoughtcrime Press) and EVERYTHING GOOD IS DYING (Deep Vellum Publishing), her first full length collection is forthcoming from Deep Vellum.
Her work was featured by WFAA, KERA, the Dallas Morning News, and others while she performed across Texas. For eight years, she turned strangers into friends by offering poetry on demand with her typewriter in locations as varied as art galleries, birthday celebrations, universities, festivals, and sidewalks.
She is the founder of Dark Moon Poetry & Arts, a monthly series that highlighted the creative feminine and non-binary energies of North Texans of the global majority across artistic disciplines. As a teaching artist and workshop facilitator, she’s skilled at using poetry to unlock imaginations in and out of classrooms.
She grows food with her family in Canada.
