About this Service

For over four hundred years, Black natural hair has been the target of erasure efforts, demarginalizing us both as African Americans and as women. The various institutional modalities of policing Black women’s (and men’s) hair is a form of racist politics. Despite structural denials to the contrary, the fact is that our natural hair remains a heretical war zone. Policing of both Black bodies and our natural hair is a form of structural oppression.

White American society hasn’t had to live as racialized beings. The White standard is implicitly the baseline against which all other standards are measured-- precisely the type of lens that problematizes Black, Afro Latina, and multiracial women's natural hair.

This month-long writing workshop is a safe, nurturing, intentional space to write and share your hair stories. While you will learn the conventions of good essay/memoir writing, we’re not after perfection in this workshop; we’re after exploration and reconciliation. Poems, essays, short stories, and hybrid pieces, are all welcome. Bring your writing materials, be that a literal notebook, journal, sketchbook, or a screen and keyboard. If emotions come up, be they anger, sadness, outrage, or tears, those emotions are welcome. We’ll begin with a series of prompts to help you begin writing. Each week we’ll workshop our drafts with a partner, engage in revision, and have an opportunity to share our stories with the group.

Led by the author of TRAUMA, TRESSES, & TRUTH: Untangling Our Hair through Personal Narratives (Chicago Review Press) and producer of the 2021, 2023, and 2024 TRAUMA, TRESSES, & TRUTH conferences.

About this Lister

Lyzette Wanzer is a San Francisco writer, editor, and writing workshop instructor. Her work appears in over thirty literary journals, magazines, books, and newspapers. Library Journal named her book, TRAUMA, TRESSES, & TRUTH: Untangling Our Hair Through Personal Narratives (Chicago Review Press), a Top 10 Best Social Sciences Book. Her articles have appeared in Essay Daily, The Naked Truth, and the San Francisco University High School Journal. Her research interests include professional development for creative writers, Black feminism, critical race theory, and the lyrical essay form. Lyzette is a contributor to LYRIC ESSAY AS RESISTANCE: Truth from the Margins (Wayne State University Press) and THE CHALK CIRCLE: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays (Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing).

Lyzette has served as judge of the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition’s Intercultural Essay category and the Women’s National Book Association’s Effie Lee Morris Writing Contest’s Fiction category. She’s been an application reviewer for the Anderson Center Artists’ Residency and California Arts Council. She presents her work at conferences across the country, including the American and Popular Culture Association, Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), College English Association, Desert Nights, Rising Stars (Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing), Empowering Wom[x]n of Color Conference, Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture Since 1900, Grub Street’s Muse & The Marketplace, San Francisco Writers Conference, The Society for the Study of African American Life and History, and Southern Humanities Council. In August 2021, 2023, and 2024, she produced her own two-day virtual conference, Trauma, Tresses, & Truth: A Natural Hair Conference, featuring panels, workshops, and readings examining the policing, perception, politics, and persecution of Black women’s natural hair.

Background and Expertise

A National Writers’ Union and Authors Guild member, Lyzette has been awarded writing residencies at Blue Mountain Center (NY), Kimmel Harding Center for the Arts (NE), Playa Summer Lake (OR), Horned Dorset Colony (NY), Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow (AR), Headlands Center for the Arts (CA), The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada, PlySpace (IN), The Anderson Center (MN), and Santa Fe Arts Institute (NM). Montalvo Arts Center has named her a 2023-2025 Lucas Arts Fellow. Her work has been supported with grants from Center for Cultural Innovation, San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Black Artist Foundry, The Awesome Foundation, and California Humanities, a National Endowment for the Humanities partner. She sits on the Board of Intersection for the Arts, an arts nonprofit dedicated to helping artists grow through fiscal sponsorship, low-cost coworking and event space, and professional development programs. Lyzette is founder of Muses & Melanin, a professional-development fellowship program for creative writers of color.