FIYA (pronounced f-I-yah)

FIYA is a womanist, educator, storyteller, poet, film/video producer, mentor, and visionary. She has always remained flexible when it comes to her writing because she refuses to be categorized. Her ambition is to be recognized as a diverse and insightful writer who shares her own stories and those of others whom she encounters on life’s journey.

Revelation, Revolution, and Retrospection: Notes from the Fiyaside a book of conscious and subconscious poetry/prose inspired by her own spiritual evolution. Poems include, Elevated People, Godiva, Bootshaker, Ndegeocelo U, Beautiful Black Sistas, Brenda, Black Lightening, Stones, and America. Also included is a special essay dedicated to her mother, Discovering My Mother’s Garden.

Elevated People: Meditations from the Depths of Fiya is a forthcoming spoken word CD that includes a variety of stream of conscious literary and musical vibrations.

Fall of the House of Snow, the short story, is currently being published by the Hurston-Wright Foundation. It will appear February 2003 in the anthology entitled, The Hoot and Hollar of the Owls. The novella is currently a work in progress.
Fall of the House of Snow follows the lives of four men as seen through the eyes of a young woman who befriends this colorful cast of characters. Kenny is a nurse’s aid who lives in what is known as the House of Snow. The house is named for the ‘family’ that lives within which includes Miss Easter, Christmas, Autumn, April, and Kenny Snow. They are more than friends; they just happen to be the hottest drag queens in town. The novel is set in a small city during the late 1980s. The AIDS epidemic has just become a pertinent topic of discussion among gay people. Kenny befriends Angie a lonely woman in search of her own sexual identity. He takes her on the gay club scene and teaches her what it is to be a member of a ‘House’ family. As Angie discovers herself, her relationship with Kenny flourishes, and in the tradition of a tragic comedy, the ‘family’ begins to fall…one ‘snowflake’ at a time.

The play, Fall of the House of Snow, is a derivation of the short story and novella. However, while the short story/novella follow the lives of four colorful men as seen through the eyes of a young woman, the play picks up at the end of the story when ‘the House’ has fallen and there are only two surviving members, Miss Christmas Snow and Kenny. After discovering that Kenny may be on his deathbed, Miss Christmas leaves her nightclub performing in Las Vegas to come to Kenny’s aid. Using motherly wisdom and song, she hopes to revive him by sharing memories of their antics in the ‘House of Snow’. While heavily medicated, Kenny is encouraged by Miss Christmas to fulfill his recurring dream of performing in full drag.