Mawiyah Patten is a Black queer writer, outdoor enthusiast, professional overthinker, cat guardian, and mixologist. She also considers herself a wonderful sister, daughter, and friend, and it must be true since no one has said otherwise. Her life has taken her to both sides (and some might suggest, both extremes of life and politics) of the United States. She was born and raised in Southern California, and while she misses her family, the Pacific Ocean, and the food, her ancestry and curiosities about family, place, Blackness, and liberatory social movements called her to the South. She made North Carolina her home in 2012. Since then, she has worked as a facilitator, trainer, and organizer around issues of race and gender equity. She has also led abortion access campaigns in the deep South and recently served as the co-director of the only 501(c)(4) organization in North Carolina dedicated to narrative strategy and creative electoral communications to POC voters. Mawiyah’s experiences on the West Coast and in the U.S. South inform much of her writing. She uses writing as a way to explore themes of racial identity, nature and Black people’s relationship to outdoors, and community. She is currently working on her first book, a memoir where she challenges the perception of California as a sunny, liberal, and “post-racial” utopia, and dissects the often lauded “strong Black woman” trope. Her book also examines white surveillance, respectability politics, and spiritual and sexual deviance.
