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Biography

Wanda Phipps is a poet, journalist, dramaturg, translator as well as a singer/songwriter. You can reach her at: phipps.wanda@gmail.com.


I was born in Washington, D.C. and studied theater and English literature at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City, acting at American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, CA and poetry at Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO.

I am the author of Wake-Up Calls:66 Morning Poems (Soft Skull Press), the chapbooks Lunch Poems (Boog Literature), Your Last Illusion or Break Up Sonnets (Situations), After the Mishap (Faux Press e-chapbooks) and the CD-Rom Zither Mood (Faux Press). I’m also the co-author of Shanar: Dedication Ritual of a Buryat Shaman in Siberia (Parabola). My poems have been published over 100 times in journals such as Agni, Exquisite Corpse, The World, Hanging Loose, Sensitive Skin, Long Shot, and the webzines How2: Contemporary Innovative Writing by Women, POETIC VOICES, milkmag, Jack, $lavery: Cyberzine of the Arts, The East Village, Shampoo and Brooklyn Review Online.

I’ve performed her work live all over the U.S. as well as on papertiger, an Australian CD-ROM journal, the CDs State Of The Union (EMF) produced by Elliott Sharp, New Word Order, Compilation CD, Tomato/Rhino/WEA Records and the audio cassette journal We Magazine. My work can currently be found in the anthologies Oblek: Writing From The New Coast, Unbearables (Autonomedia), Valentine, Verses That Hurt: Pleasure and Pain from the Poemfone Poets (St. Martin's Press), and The Portable Boog Reader (Boog Literature).

I was a contributing editor for the Internet Artszine Big Bridge and for the New York City-based literary magazine LUNGFULL! and was a co-recipient of a Meet the Composer/International Creative Collaborations Program Grant. I have also received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Agni, The National Theatre Translation Fund and the New York State Council on the Arts.

My translations with Virlana Tkacz of Ukrainian poetry and Buryat shamans’ chants and songs have appeared in several journals, anthologies and collections including: Luna, Agni, Shaman’s Drum, Two Lines: A Journal of Translation, From Three Worlds: New Writing from Ukraine (Glas/Zephyr), A Kingdom of Fallen Statues: Poems and Essays by Oksana Zabuzhko (Wellspring), Indian Ink by Ludmyla Taran (Corvus Albus, Kiev), Leading Contemporary Poets: An International Anthology (Poetry International), Worlds of Visions International Anthology, Eastern Visions Anthology and Ten Years of Poetry from the Yara Theatre Workshops at Harvard.

I coordinated the Monday Night Reading/Performance Series at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City for three years and ran the 1998/99 season of their Friday Night series as well.

I’m also a founding member of Yara Arts Group (a resident theatre company of La Mama E.T.C.) and have collaborated on numerous theatrical productions with them which have been presented in Ukraine and Siberia as well as in New York City at La Mama, E.T.C.

I was also a dramaturgical assistant for The Wooster Group and I have written about poetry, performance, experimental theatre and the arts for Time Out New York, About.com, Paper Magazine, High Performance, NYC Metro, BoogLit, Cover Arts New York and The Poetry Project Newsletter.