**Event postponed due to weather**

FLORENCE, AL - Faylita Hicks, poet, essayist, and interdisciplinary artist, will be part of the Black History Month Speaker Series at the University of North Alabama. The event is scheduled for 5-6:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 15, and will take place via Zoom.

"The University of North Alabama is commemorating Black History Month with an array of events, activities, programs, and tributes to African American history and achievement," said Dr. Andrea Hunt, Founding Director of the Mitchell-West Center for Social Inclusion and Special Assistant to the Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. "UNA takes deep pride in the history of African Americans who have enriched our campus and who have gone on to make an indelible mark in the Shoals, region, and nation. This year, we are proud and honored to welcome Faylita Hicks as our Black History Month Speaker Series guest speaker."

Hicks, who is the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry Finalist, will read from and discuss pieces from her 2019 volume of poetry, Hoodwitch. In this debut collection, Hicks speaks about giving her child up for adoption, mourning the death of her fiance, and embracing the nonbinary femme body-perserving in the face of medical malpractice, domestic, and police violence.

Registration for the event is required and can be done via this link: tinyurl.com/faylita. The program is sponsored by the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; the Mitchell-West Center for Social Inclusion; and the Department of English at UNA.

About The University of North Alabama

The University of North Alabama is an accredited, comprehensive regional state university offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs through the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Business, Education and Human Sciences, and the Anderson College of Nursing and Health Professions. Occupying a 130-acre campus in a residential section of Florence, Alabama, UNA is located within a four-city area that also includes Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia. UNA Athletics, a renowned collegiate athletics program with seven (7) Division II National Championships, is now a proud member of the NCAA Division I's ASUN Big South Conference. The University of North Alabama is an equal opportunity institution and does not

discriminate in the admission policy on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, disability, age, or national origin. For more: www.una.edu and www.una.edu/unaworks/