SISTORIES is a queer black feminist/womanist storysharing organization that recognizes reflexive storytelling as an ancestral healing tool. We produce multimedia storysharing spaces for southern Black women to explore sites of recovery and resistance in our stories. By applying a Black feminist lens and creating healing spaces to share with each other, we work to transform the impact of oppressive systems on our bodies, spirits, and communities.
We envision a world where the needs revealed through our stories are met. Where the holistic wellbeing–emotional, psychological, spiritual, and material–of all Black women, femmes, and gender-expansive Black people is prioritized. Where policy and social interactions enable us to live self-determined and whole lives.
Our award-winning interactive publication is our flagship program, which features stories and art by southern-rooted Black women, femmes, and GNC people and a workbook with reflection questions, writing prompts, and reading lists used to encourage healing and self-discovery.
Sib's Sofa Sibs Sofa brings writers, artists, and members of the Sistories community to our communal couch. Listen to audio recordings of the texts that appear in our magazines and potent conversations with southern storysharers.
We host community writing workshops and story circles to nurture, support, and celebrate the creative and holistic spirits of southern Black women and femme writers. Please check back for upcoming events.
Our youth and young adult programs focus on developing literacy skills, cultivating wellness, and providing mentorship. Cohorts of middle and high school age Black girls and GNC youth participate in a bibliotherapeutic bookclub, develop an interactive zine, and get an introduction to publishing and writing industry.
Help us continue nurturing the next generation of Southern Black feminist storysharers.
Founder & Executive Director | Editor-in-Chief
Ashley Nickens (she/her) M.A., is an award-winning educator and storysharer. Born in Maryland, raised in Virginia, and made a woman in the Carolinas, her work is grounded in her southeastern roots, and seeks to continue a tradition of Black feminist storysharing that uncovers, recovers, and (re)creates models of possibility across time and space.
Ashley is an Artivist in Cypress Fund’s Prismatic Artivist Residency (2022-2024) and a former Resident Artist at The Roll Up CLT (2020). Her writing has appeared in RaceBaitr, Black Femme Collective, and Engaging Collections. Learn more at ashdanielle.com
Community Director
Cidney Tiiggett (she/her), a member of Delta Sigma Theta Inc and the former host of We See You Sis podcast, specializes in curating conversations around Black southern femmes in an effort to normalize their shared experiences. She is a graduate from Appalachian State University with a degree in Global Studies, and a concentration in post traumatic growth.
Multimedia Editorial Director | Poetry Editor
Fola Onifade (she/they) is a staff writer and associate podcast producer for Democracy in Color, a nonprofit media organization at the intersection of race and politics. In her creative work, she explores and celebrates the realities of African diaspora women through visual storytelling, poetry, narrative fiction, and essays. She's taking her late 20s one existential crisis at a time. You can keep up with her at folaonifade.com.
Creative Director
Mariah Webber (she/they), M.A., is a writer and artist from North Carolina researching Black trans, queer and feminist theories, Black Southern studies, visual culture studies, and Black diasporic religions. Her dissertation, which is supported by a Eugene Cota-Robles fellowship, examines the ways ritual and sacred practices indigenous to African and Southern folk traditions bleed into Black women’s erotic expression, affective labors, and embodiment practices within Southern space, creating alternative geographies of eroticism, infused with energies of both the sacred and profane. Mariah’s past writing has been featured in Sistories: A Literary Magazine (2019; 2021) and becoming undisciplined: a zine (2019). She is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Prose Editor
Danielle Buckingham (she/her), affectionately known as Dani Bee, is a Chicago-born, Mississippi-raised writer based in Oxford, Mississippi. A 2021 Lambda Literary fellow, Dani’s work has been published in Midnight & Indigo literary magazine, Raising Mothers, MadameNoir, and elsewhere.
Poetry Editor
Samah (she/her) is a black femme writer, editor, and creative director whose work lives at the intersection of the arts, community building, and social justice. She has spent the last 5+ years in creative and communications strategy working with artists, interfaith leaders, and activists to develop an identity defined approach to narrative storytelling that prioritizes authenticity.
Prose/Copy Editor
Emiene Wright (she/her) is an award-winning journalist based in Charlotte, NC. Nigerian by birth and African-American by lineage, she mines sex, race, class and privilege to fill in the gaps of unwritten histories, and map out her portion of bright, Black futurism. She won the 2022 Green Eyeshade Award for best special news project in the Southeastern US.
2025 Guest Curator of Cultural Programs
Mariah M., or Em, (they/them) is a Black queer writer, cultureworker, and worldbuilder rooting in Greensboro, North Carolina (ancestrally Keyauwee & Saura tribal land).
As a practicing abolitionist, Em embodies non-binary as a praxis for navigating our lives under and undoing imperialism, and moves with their roles in community inseparable from their identity as an artist. By way of Toni Cade Bombara, they aim to use their existence to the ends of making revolution irresistible. By way of the cosmos, they are an Aquarius sun, moon + mercury, & Capricorn mars + venus. Learn more at mariahmcreates.com