Tricia HerseySpeaker and Booking Agent Information

In order to create mental, physical, and spiritual spaces for radical thinking and creativity, she must unavoidably remove these limits. Her extensive practice embraces the teachings of somatics, womanism, womanist theology, Black Liberation Theology, Afrofuturism, and her ancestors while opening doors and opportunities for world-building and future-casting.

Hersey developed the concepts "rest as resistance" and "rest as reparations" from these extensive knowledge bases, and he launched The Nap Ministry, a pioneering organization that spearheaded the global campaign to recognize the liberating potential of sleep.

Her work provides a route to the relaxation techniques required to jointly create and envision new worlds while we concurrently deconstruct and unlearn the structures that support and sustain the racial, social, and environmental devastation caused by extractive capitalism and white supremacy.

Hersey has 20 years of experience working with Chicago Public Schools, Columbia College Chicago, Steppenwolf Theatre, United States Peace Corps, Emory University Rare Books and Manuscript Library, and numerous community organizations and universities across the country as a teaching artist, archivist assistant, community activist, and curriculum developer for arts-integrated learning.

Hersey has collaborated with several organizations, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, MOCA Cleveland, Speed Museum, Flux Projects, Google Global, MIT, Brown University, and many more to show artworks, give presentations, and provide group sleeping experiences.

The New York Times, The Guardian, PlayBoy, Afropunk, The Atlantic, Complex Magazine, Dutch Vogue, NPR All Things Considered, USA Today, Bon Appetit, and other publications have published her thoughts and work. She earned her bachelor's degree in public health from Eastern Illinois University and her master's degree in divinity from Emory University's Candler School of Theology.

Together with her husband Tommy and her kid The Dream, she presently resides in South Georgia.