Hess Love
Cultural Strategist
My center :
Magic in the Mundane
advocacy, AfroChesapeake lifelines, afro-ecology, anthropology, archeology, archival, being, black environmentalism, black-geographies, burial sites/cemeteries, communications strategy, climate, creative writing, descendant-led, digital literacy, environmental literacy, ethnoecology, ethnography, folklore, heritage, mothering, narrative building, oral traditions, religion, research, social science, spirituality, and storytelling.
Hi, I’m Hess.
It’s a family name. Before me, there were and are others. Before us all there was Hester: the last woman in our family to be enslaved via chattel slavery in the U.S.
Hester (sometimes called Hess) was born, loved, enslaved, freed, married, mothering, grieving, living, and buried in the same city that most of her descendants were born and raised in -including myself. Hester’s story and the space it took place in has been sacred to my family for generations, and I bare a fragment of her name.
In a sense, I was predestined to find purpose in the preservation of place, plants, and people.
I am a hoodoo-mother-poet, playwright, ethnographer, Master Naturalist, Watershed Steward, Woodlands Steward, and hunter apprentice who carries Afro-Chesapeake tradition at the heart of my work.
The expanse of my work rekindles a deep sense of being and creativity. It allows my rootedness -as a keeper of the AfroChesapeake experience- to serve as a model. I use the medicine of wonder and tenderness toward the repressed, the fragmented, and the unknown. I encourage others to reclaim their stories, commit to wisdom, reintegrate themselves into the wild, and learn how to become a symbiont with their ancestors, adored ones, and the more-than-human world.
In community and creative ventures, I move as the founder of the Chesapeake Conjure Society (the first Hoodoo Society), an MFA candidate in creative writing, Black burial ground advocate, ritualist, writer, an independent scholar, folklorist with a concentration on Hoodoo and Black Atlantic Religion in the Chesapeake Bay region, and Curator of Black Americana Religion and Spirituality (Folk Belief) for African American Folklorists magazine.
In my career, I currently serve as a Maryland Governor Wes Moore appointed/Senate confirmed Commissioner for a historical city (with a focus on archaeology, K-12 education, adult education, museum interpretation, and community engagement), a citizen scientist appointee (with a focus on environmental legacy through archaeology on sites of enslavement, non-native & invasive plant species, and culturally responsive climate education) with an Environmental Research Center, a heritage preservationist, and a Communications Strategist for an AfroFuturist research and evaluation firm. Previously I was the Descendant Communicator for a historic, Up-South Appalachian archeological site, burial ground, and furnace..
I came into these roles with several years of experience in communications, community organizing, and storytelling before my purpose pivot.