Sikivu Hutchinson

Sikivu Hutchinson, Ph.D. is an educator, author and playwright. She is a recipient of the 2020 Harvard Humanist of the Year award and received her doctorate from New York University. Her books include Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical (2020), Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (2003), Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (2011), and the novel White Nights, Black Paradise (2015), on Peoples Temple and the 1978 Jonestown massacre. She also wrote, directed and produced a short film and play of White Nights, Black Paradise and was awarded a “Humanities For All” grant from the California Humanities Foundation in 2019. Her short plays Grinning Skull and Narcolepsy, Inc were featured in the Robey Theatre’s 2017 Paul Robeson Festival and the 2018 Hollywood Fringe Festival. Her articles have been published in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Religion Dispatches, The Humanist Magazine and the L.A. Times. She is also the founder of Black Skeptics Los Angeles and the Women’s Leadership Project, a Black feminist mentoring program for girls of color in South L.A. Her latest novel, Rock ‘n’ Roll Heretic: The Life and Times of Rory Tharpe, was published in March 2021. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: http://sikivuhutchinson.com
Twitter: @sikivuhutch
IG: @sikivu

MORE ABOUT ME
​My most gratifying moment in theater was directing my first two plays, Grinning Skull and Narcolepsy, Inc. I had the opportunity to work with outstanding older Black and Latinx actresses and amplify the feminist voices and stories of women of color blue and white collar workers vis-a-vis sexual harassment, wage discrimination, respectability politics, sexist religious power and control, and corporate theocracy. I also produced a short film spinoff and a webseries based on these pieces. Working across disciplines as an independent producer, director, playwright and musician has given me a strong foundation for pursuing my next project -- a "demi-musical" based on my 2021 novel Rock 'n' Roll Heretic: The Life and Times of Rory Tharpe.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON 
1. White Nights, Black Paradise
2. Rock 'n' Roll Heretic

KEYWORDS
​Queer, Black Feminist, Historical, Speculative fiction, Sci Fi, musical