Yolanda Wisher

Poet, musician, educator, and curator Yolanda Wisher was born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia and raised in North Wales, Pennsylvania. She earned an M.A. in English/Poetry from Temple University and a B.A. in English/Black Studies from Lafayette College, where she received an honorary doctorate in 2021. She was named inaugural Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania in 1999, third Poet Laureate of Philadelphia for 2016 and 2017, and currently serves as chair of the Philadelphia Poet Laureate Governing Committee. Wisher is the author of Monk Eats an Afro (Hanging Loose Press, 2014) and co-editor of the anthology Peace is a Haiku Song (Philadelphia Mural Arts, 2013) with mentor Sonia Sanchez. Wisher performs a blend of poetry and song with her band Yolanda Wisher & The Afroeaters and executive produced their debut album Doublehanded Suite, released in 2022. Her writing has been featured in numerous literary journals as well as The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, CBC Radio, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series, and the Poetry Foundation's Audio Poem of the Day series. Wisher has been commissioned to create new works of poetry by ICA Philadelphia, Fabric Workshop and Museum, HealthSpark Foundation, The Public Interest Law Center, Philadelphia Peace Plaza Committee, Delaware River Waterfront Corporation, and Philadelphia Jazz Project, among others. Wisher has been a poet in residence at Hedgebrook and Aspen Words, and she has taught poetry at K-12 schools, community organizations, prisons, social service agencies, and colleges and universities. Wisher co-founded and directed the youth-led Germantown Poetry Festival from 2007 to 2010 and served as Director of Art Education for Philadelphia Mural Arts from 2010 to 2015. She is the founder of School of Guerrilla Poetics, a training ground for folks interested in nurturing and mobilizing communities through poetry. Along with Trapeta B. Mayson in 2022, Wisher co-founded ConsenSIS, an initiative that seeks to count, gather, and memorialize Black femme poets in the Philadelphia area. She has curated projects and events with The Rosenbach, Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Free Library of Philadelphia, and U.S. Department of Arts & Culture. As Curator of Spoken Word and Co-Artistic Director at Philadelphia Contemporary from 2018 to 2023, Wisher produced programs like Stellar Masses, a series of poetry church services, and Love Jawns: A Mixtape, a collection of spoken word-infused soundscapes. A Pew and Cave Canem Fellow, Wisher received the Leeway Foundation's Transformation Award in 2019 for her commitment to art for social change, and last year, she was named a Philadelphia Cultural Treasures Artist Fellow.