User:Mchanges!/sandbox
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (born 17 February 1966)[1] is a South African writer and performance artist. She has won awards for her work and is most notable for her poetry, which has been published in two collections and many magazines and anthologies. She studied in Grahamstown and Paris and spent some time living in Los Angeles before returning to settle in Johannesburg.
Biography
De Villers was born at Halfway House in Johannesburg, South Africa.[1] She has written about having been adopted at nine months of age, although not being told of it by her adoptive parents until she was 20 years old.[2]
De Villers studied journalism in Grahamstown[3] and is a graduate of the Lecoq International School of Theatre in Paris, where she studied mime and theatre.[4][5] Returning to South Africa, wrote television scripts – for shows including for Backstage, Tsha Tsha, Thetha Msawawa, Takalani Sesame and Soul City among many others[6] - and worked as a stage actress and improviser for ten years,[5] from 1998 to 2008, before winning a place on the British Council/Crossing Borders programme and a grant from the Centre for the Book to publish her first volume of poetry, Taller than Buildings (2006).[7] Her second collection of poetry, The Everyday Wife, was launched at the Harare International Festival of the Arts in April 2010.[8]
Her poetry and prose are widely published in local and international journals and anthologies, including The Edinburgh Review, Poui, A Hudson View, We Are... (ed. Natalia Molebatsi; Penguin, 2008), Just Keep Breathing (eds Rosamund Haden and Sandra Dodson; Jacana, 2008), New Writing from Africa (ed. J. M. Coetzee; Johnson & King James, 2009), Home Away (ed. Louis Paul Greenberg; Zebra Press, 2010), Poems for Haiti (ed. Amitabh Mitra; Poets Printery 2010), Letter to South Africa (Umuzi 2011).[9][8].
She has toured her autobiographical one-woman show, Original Skin,[10] in South Africa and abroad, and has performed her poetry from Cuba to Cape Town, Berlin to Harare, as well as in her home town, Johannesburg.[7][6]
Bibliography
- Taller Than Buildings (Centre for the Book, 2006)
- with Keorapetse Kgositsile, Don Mattera and Lebo Mashile, Beyond Words: South African Poetics (an Apple & Snakes project; Flipped Eye Publishing, 2009)
- The Everyday Wife (Modjaji Books, 2010)
- Editor, Kaiyu Xiao, Isabelle Ferrin-Aguirre, No Serenity Here - an anthology of African Poetry (Beijing: New World Publishers, 2010.)
References
- ^ a b Biography at lyrikline.org
- ^ Poets on Adoption, 11 April 2011.
- ^ Phillippa Yaa de Villiers page at Passa Porta, International House of Literature in Brussels.
- ^ Biography at Badilisha Poetry.
- ^ a b Biography at Centre for Creative Arts, University of Kwazulu-Natal.
- ^ a b “Phillippa Yaa de Villiers”, Joburg, my City, our Future.
- ^ a b Phillippa Yaa de Villiers page at African Books Collective.
- ^ a b Phillippa Yaa de Villiers’s The Everyday Wife, Peony Moon.
- ^ Publications and scripts produced, deScribe.
- ^ “Phillippa Yaa De Villiers performs Original Skin - a true story about a mixed-race baby adopted by a white family under apartheid.”.
External links
- Official website.
- Matthew Mokoena, “The Shedding Of Society’s Original Skin” (interview with Phillippa Yaa de Villiers), 19 May 2010.
- “Beyond Words - Interviews 2 Phillippa Yaa De Villiers.
- Phillippa Yaa de Villiers performing at The Drum, Birmingham, 31 October 2009. Sustained Theatre.
- “Phillippa Yaa De Villiers at Word 'n Sound, Johannesburg”.
- Margaret Busby's Foreword to The Everyday Wife. Books Live.
- "The Quiet Conversation - Phillippa Yaa De Villiers (Poet). Fred Wisdom (Jazz guitar)".
- Phillippa Yaa de Villiers page at Passa Porta, International House of Literature in Brussels.
- Phillippa Yaa de Villiers podcast.
- "The poet Phillippa Yaa de Villiers talks about her new collection, The Everyday Wife, with Janet van Eeden", Litnet.