Work

Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi is a Black mother who writes.

Her poems live in Recenter Press, MAYDAY, Torch, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Elysium Review, Rise Up Review, sin cesar, The Texas Observer, Entropy, The Boiler, Anthropology Now, and other portals. She is a fellow of the Pink Door Writing Retreat, the Anaphora Arts Writing Residency, In Surreal Life, and Abode Press.

The author of two chapbooks, MOON WOMAN (Thoughtcrime Press) and EVERYTHING GOOD IS DYING (Deep Vellum Publishing), her first full length collection, DREAMS FOR EARTH, arrived from Deep Vellum in September 2025.

Her work has been uplifted by The Times Colonist in British Columbia, and by WFAA, KERA, the Dallas Morning News, and others while she performed across Texas. For ten 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 raucous sidewalks.

She was the founder of Dark Moon Poetry & Arts, a monthly series that highlighted creative feminine and non-binary energies across racialized experiences and artistic disciplines. As a teaching artist and workshop facilitator, she’s skilled at using poetry to unlock imaginations in and out of classrooms.

She lives beside forests and waters on unceded lands of the T’Sou-ke Nation. To honor her belief that the Earth is alive and all beings are kin, she has taken the 10% pledge to donate ten percent of lifetime income to effective charities. We are all responsible for each other.

No art happens in isolation. Soak up some gratitude here.