Turning the fire meant to destroy us into the fury that will save us.
Winner of the 2025 Edie Turner First Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing, presented by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology
In the aftermath of an arson attack meant to destroy Women With A Vision (WWAV), Deon Haywood, the WWAV team, and I set out to gather every life-giving ember and piece together the story of WWAV’s 35 years of radical, Southern, Black feminist world-making in hopes of igniting dreams anew.
On March 5, 2024, we released of our collectively-authored book, Fire Dreams: Making Black Feminist Liberation in the South, and the Born in Flames Living Archive that grounds this work. We are also in the process of producing a new zine series called EMBERS to make the southern Black feminist organizing tools that we offer through Fire Dreams more accessible to our communities in this moment.
Praise for Fire Dreams
“Providing an urgent and layered account of Black feminist abolitionist organizing, this book is a model of nuanced, accessible, and theoretically deft scholar activist work. Laura McTighe and Women With A Vision demonstrate that Black feminism mobilized with persistence is a worldmaking politics and practice. Fire Dreams is a gorgeous work of care, radical planning, and theory that will inspire and enlighten readers.” — Sarah Haley, author of No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity
“When fighting the amassed forces of injustice, our oppressors must remember that fire burns and fire also replenishes. The inspiring story of Deon Haywood and Women With A Vision recounts how nothing can quench the determination of people demanding freedom, and nothing can quell the passion of those who have committed their lives to justice and human rights. These warrior goddesses are fierce and loving in this wonderfully moving story told with Laura McTighe. This is essential reading for those of us learning to be fearless in the service of our people.” — Loretta J. Ross, activist, author, and MacArthur fellow
Join the Fire Dreams Movement Launch!
Fire Dreams is not simply a book to be read. It is a toolkit to build the world otherwise. For that reason, we have not organized a book tour in a traditional sense. Through our movement launch, we are working with organizers across the South and across the country to grow southern people’s power in struggles for abolition feminism, reproductive justice, harm reduction, and more. We are hosting intensive organizing sessions to share the book’s tools, deepen our relationships, and strengthen our collective strategy to build the world that must be. Please scroll down for tour dates, past and future, and please be in touch if you would like to schedule time to work with us and grow your own fire dreams!
April 30, 2026 — Santa Barbara, CA at University of California, Santa Barbara
April 4-5, 2025 — Washington DC at American University
March 14, 2025 — New Orleans LA at Tulane University
February 13, 2025 — Philadelphia PA at University of Pennsylvania
December 3, 2024 — Baltimore MD with LifexCode and Black World Seminar at Johns Hopkins University
November 23, 2024 — San Diego CA for the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion
November 15, 2024 — Baltimore MD for the annual meeting of the American Studies Association
November 14, 2024 — Baltimore MD at Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse for joint book talk — Abolition, Feminism, Organizing: “All Our Trials : Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence” + “Fire Dreams: Making Black Feminist Liberation in the South”
October 30, 2024 — The Public Eye for a conversation with Kitana Ananda and Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson about what movement builders can learn from WWAV’s relational organizing for health and reproductive justice, and our practice of “research as survival” as fires blaze across the U.S. and the world. read here…
August 28, 2024 — The Immanent Frame for a front porch talk about the reality of white supremacist Christian terror in the South and our work to build otherwise in these times. read here…
August 22-25, 2024 — Washington, DC for the Let’s Talk About Sex conference
August 14, 2024 — Los Angeles CA with Black Women for Wellness
July 4, 2024 — New Orleans LA for ESSENCE!
June 18, 2024 — with the Drug Policy Alliance
June 8, 2024 — Washington, DC for the 30th Anniversary of Reproductive Justice gala honoring the 12 Founding Mothers
May 25, 2024 — Dallas TX with the Afiya Center for the Texas Black Womxn Reproductive Justice Summit
April 16-18, 2024 — Baltimore MD with the Bloom Collective for Black Maternal Health Week
April 4, 2024 — The Revealer in conversation with Kali Handelman about what it meant to co-author a book representing so many years of thinking and fighting together and how we hope readers will find inspiration and tools to work and fight with us. read here…
March 22, 2024 — Atlanta GA at Charis Books and More with our movement partners Access Reproductive Care-Southeast, Black Feminist Future, Feminist Women’s Health Center, The Georgia Harm Reduction Coalition, SisterLove, Inc, SisterSong WOC, and Project South
March 19, 2024 — Inquest for an excerpt from Chapter 3 on WWAV’s NO Justice project, tracing how Black sex workers in Louisiana fought back against criminalization post-Hurricane Katrina and won. read here…
March 5, 2024 — New Orleans LA with our beloved community
laura mctighe 