Yolanda Wisher

Yolanda Wisher (born 1976) is an American poet, educator and spoken-word artist who focuses on the experience of being African-American. She is a graduate of Temple University and was selected as the third Poet Laureate of Philadelphia in 2016.

Education and early life

Yolanda Wisher was born in Philadelphia and grew up in North Wales, Pennsylvania. She studied English and Black Studies, obtaining her BA degree in English and Black Studies from Lafayette College. She received her MA in creative writing from Temple University in 2000. and is a 2016 writer-in-residence at the Hedgebrook residency program for women writers.

Personal life

Wisher lives in Germantown with her partner Mark Palacio and their son Thelonius. She frequently plays music with her band "Yolanda Wisher and the Quick Fixx".

Works by Wisher

Books of poetry 2014: Monk Eats an Afro, , OCLC 8795289 Contributor to anthologies 2007: The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, OCLC 239032215 2009: A Best of Fence: The First Nine Years, , OCLC 318878255 2013: Gathering Ground: a Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, , OCLC 62133808 2013: Peace is a Haiku Song (ed. with Sonia Sanchez), OCLC 877155740 Wisher has also published in periodicals including The American Poetry Review, Black Arts Quarterly, Chain, Drumvoices Revue, Fence, Hanging Loose, Melus, Meridians Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts, Open Letter, Ploughshares, and POeP!. and later selected as the third poet laureate of Philadelphia in 2016, by mayor-elect Jim Kenney.

She received a Leeway Art and Change grant in 2008,