[Jewish] Writer in residence with Jewish links!

[Alexis Light]

"This year's Writer in Residence, Michelene Wandor, is a leading 
British feminist writer with a strong interest in Jewish culture.  Her 
short stories include riffs on Jewish themes, from the dybbuk to Yentl 
the Yeshiva Boy, and her scholarship, which she'll present at the 
Yiddish Book Center next week, centers on a 17th century Jewish 
composer, Salamone Rossi."

WRITER in RESIDENCE
School of Interdisciplinary Arts

TWO EVENTS

With visiting Writer in Residence
Michelene Wandor

Tuesday 5th April
7.30pm in the Kiva, third floor of the Library
FALSE RELATIONS
Short story reading and discussion
British writer Michelene Wandor’s writing ranges over a number of 
genres and creative and critical forms. Her recent collection of short 
stories, False Relations, draws on familiarity with these varied 
genres, and also on her involvement with performing sixteenth and 
seventeenth century music. The latter provides material for content of 
the stories, and has also influenced their form(s). So questions about 
‘voice’ are central to them, in the literary and the musical sense. Her 
work is saturated with feminist alertness to the gendering of 
relationships and daily life.  Refreshments after the reading



Thursday, April 7 at 7:30 pm
the Applebaum-Driker Theater, The National Yiddish Book Center
(on the Hampshire campus, across from Dakin)

The Enigma of Salamone Rossi
a reading/ talk on 17th-century composer Salamone Rossi
While published as  playwright, poet and fiction writer, as a musician, 
Michelene Wandor specializes in pre-19th-century music and has made it 
her mission to collect and perform Rossi’s music. Rossi was a Jewish 
composer and musician in Mantua in the early 17th century and a 
contemporary of Monteverdi.   He wrote music for both the Gonzaga court 
and the local Jewish community.  Wandor has written extensively about 
his work and produced a CD entitled Salamone Rossi Hebreo Mantovano:  
Early 17th Century Music From Mantua, which includes poetry woven 
throughout the music.

This program is sponsored by a generous anonymous gift from a Hampshire 
College family, with support from Hampshire College’s School of 
Interdisciplinary Arts and the National Yiddish Book Center.


Here are further details about Michelene

CV SUMMARY
Michelene Wandor is a playwright, poet, fiction writer and musician. 
She is the first woman playwright to have had a drama on one of the 
National Theatre’s main stages – ‘The Wandering Jew’, in 1987, the same 
year her adaptation of ‘The Belle of Amherst won an International Emmy 
for Thames TV. Her radio plays include Orlando and Friends and 
Corridors of Light and Shadow (Radio 3) and her dramatisations for 
Radio 4 include novels by Dostoyevsky, Jane Austen, George Eliot, 
Kipling, H.G. Wells, Sara Paretsky and Margaret Drabble. She has 
written two influential books on gender and contemporary theatre, Carry 
on, Understudies, and Postwar British drama: Looking Back in Gender, 
and she also reviews and broadacsts regularly on Radios 3 and 4. In 
2002 she received a Millennium Lottery Fund Award, to make a CD of the 
music of Salamone Rossi, the 17th century Jewish Mantuan composer. Her 
poetry, Gardens of Eden Revisited and her most recent collection of 
short stories, False Relations are published by Five Leaves. She has 
been teaching Creative Writing in all three genres for over two 
decades, and is currently writing a book about the subject for Palgrave 
Macmillan. Michelene Wandor holds  Royal Literary Fund Fellowship for 
2004-2005, at the University of Hertfordshire.


SHORT CURRICULUM VITAE

MICHELENE WANDOR website: mwandor.co.uk

Education
BA Hons., English, Newnham College, University of Cambridge (1962)
MA, Sociology of Literature, University of Essex (1976)
LTCL, DipTCL, Trinity College of Music, London (1993)
M.Mus, University of London and Trinity College of Music (1997)

Employment History
Freelance writer, musician, broadcaster, teacher of Creative Writing.
Editor of Poetry section, Time Out magazine, 1970-1981.
1985 – present: wide range of Creative Writing classes and workshops in 
prose, poetry and drama, including Guildhall School of Drama, City 
Literary Institute, Arvon Foundation, Universities of Loughborough, 
Kent, British and American Drama Association, in Germany, Italy and 
Israel. Since 1998 Senior Lecturer (0.75) in Creative Writing at London 
Metropolitan University.
Reviewer for New Statesman, The Listener, Sunday Times, Radio Times, 
Hampstead and Highgate Express, the Guardian, The Jewish Chronicle, 
International Record Review. Broadcaster and presenter for BBC Radios 3 
and 4, and World Service: Kaleidoscope, Third Opinion, Night Waves, 
Meridian, Saturday Review, Front Row,  Spirit of the Age, Music 
Restored.

AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS
Dust in the Sugar House (feature on the life and work of writer Antonia 
White) Runner-up for  Pye Radio Award, l979. (Radio 3.) The Ultimate 
Astonisher  (feature on the life and work of writer Dorothy Richardson) 
Copy in   the National Sound Archives, l982. (Radio 3.) Kipps  
(dramatisation of novel by H. G. Wells) Runner-up for Sony Radio Award, 
l984. (Radio 4.) The Belle of Amherst (adaptation of stage play by 
William Luce) International Emmy Award, l987. (Thames TV.) Ben Venga 
Maggio  (poem-play woven round Italian Renaissance carnival music) 
Runner-up for the Innsbruck Early Music Festival Prize, l990. Nominated 
for Sony Radio Award, l991. Nominated for Prix Italia, l991. (Radio 3.) 
The Courtier, the Prince and the Lady (play set in Renaissance Italy) 
Nominated for Sony Radio Award, l990. (Radio 3.) The Jungle Book 
(dramatisation of stories by Rudyard Kipling) Nominated for Best Radio 
Dramatisation, Writers' Guild Award, l994. (Radio 5. BBC Enterprises 
cassette.) The Piano (dramatisation of the novel of the film) Nominated 
for Best Dramatisation, Writers’ Guild

PUBLICATIONS -

Fiction
Upbeat: poems and stories. (Journeyman Press, l981) Gardens of Eden: 
collected poems. (Random Century, l990.) Gardens of Eden Revisited   
new edition, with new poems (Five Leaves, l999) Strike While the Iron 
is Hot: editor and contributor to anthology of plays about sexual 
politics, from Red Ladder, the Women's Theatre Group and Gay Sweatshop. 
Own play, 'Care and Control', about women and custody. (Journeyman 
Press, l980.)
Five Plays: 'To Die Among Friends', 'Whores D'Oeuvres', 'The Old Wives' 
Tale', 'Scissors', 'AID Thy Neighbour'. (Journeyman Press, l984.) Plays 
by Women, Vols 1-4 (editor, Methuen, 1982 -1985). The Wandering Jew: 
dramatisation of Eugene Sue's epic nineteenth-century novel. (Methuen, 
l987.) Wanted: surreal play about surrogacy. (Playbooks, l988.) Guests 
in the Body own first short story collection. (Virago, l986.) False 
Relations ,short stories (Five Leaves Publications, 2004)

Non-fiction
The Body Politic: first anthology of British Women's Liberation 
writings. Editor and contributor. (Stage One, l972.) On Gender and 
Writing: essays by male and female contributors. Editor and 
contributor. (Pandora Press, l983.) Carry On, Understudies: theatre and 
sexual politics in Britain, from l968. First edition, Methuen, l981. 
Revised, expanded and updated. (Routledge, l986.) Look Back in Gender: 
the family and sexuality in post-war British drama. (Methuen, l987.) 
Once a Feminist: book on the founding of the Women's Liberation 
Movement. Interviews. (Virago, l990.) Drama Today: post-war British 
Drama l970-l990. (British Council, l993.) PostWar British Drama: 
Looking Back in Gender (Routledge, 2001) Revised, updated and expanded 
version of ‘Look Back in Gender’.  ‘Feminism and Theatre now: 
Continuities and Discontinuities’; in Trends and Traditions in 
Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English, ed Margarete Rubik and Elke 
Mettinger-Schartmann (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2002). ‘A 
Creative Writing Manifesto’ in Creative Writing: A Good Practice Guide 
by Siobhan Holland, Report Series no 6, English Subject Centre, 
February, 2003. Salamone Rossi, Judaism and the Musical Canon, article 
on early 17th century Jewish composer. (European Judaism, Spring, 
2003). Salamone Rossi: Jewish Composer from Mantua, article on 
composer. (Jewish Renaissance, 2002.

PERFORMANCE - theatre
Numerous plays, including  Aurora Leigh (dramatisation of verse-novel 
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning , National Theatre, l981. (Also see 
Radio.)
The Wandering Jew (dramatisation of novel by Eugene Sue, about Paris 
and the Jesuits). National Theatre, l987.

RADIO (over one hundred hours of plays, dramatisations, features; 
including -
The Unlit Lamp: (dramatisation of novel by Radclyffe Hall). Radio 4, 
l980. Aurora Leigh: (dramatisation of verse-novel by Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning). Radio 3, l981.  Precious Bane:  dramatisation of novel by 
Mary Webb). Radio 4, l981. Lolly Willowes: (dramatisation of novel by 
Sylvia Townsend Warner). Radio 4, l983. An Uncommon Love:  (play based 
on the diaries of Arthur Munby, and Hannah Cullwick). Radio 4, l984. 
Venus Smiles: (dramatisation of story by J. G. Ballard). Radio 4, l985. 
  A Consoling Blue: (feature about Jean Rhys and 'Wide Sargasso Sea'). 
Radio 4, l985. The Nine Tailors: (dramatisation of thriller by Dorothy 
L. Sayers). Radio 4, l986.  The Brothers Karamazov: dramatisation of 
the novel by Dostoyevsky). Radio 4, l989.  Persuasion: (dramatisation 
of novel by Jane Austen). Radio 4, l987. Whose Body?: (dramatisation of 
thriller by Dorothy L. Sayers). Radio 4, l987. The Dwelling Place: 
(dramatisation of novel by Catherine Cookson). Radio 4, l988.  
Frenchman's Creek: ( dramatisation of novel by Daphne du Maurier). 
Radio 4, l989. The Mill on the Floss: ( dramatisation of novel by 
George Eliot). Radio 4, l991.  Killing Orders: (dramatisation of 
thriller by Sara Paretsky, ). Radio 4, l991.  A Question of Courage: 
(dramatisation of novel about suffragettes by Marjorie Darke). Radio 5, 
l992.  The King's General: (dramatisation of novel by Daphne du 
Maurier). Radio 4, l992.  Deadlock: (dramatisation of thriller by Sara 
Paretsky). Radio 4, l993.  Bitter Medicine: (dramatisation of thriller 
by Sara Paretsky). Radio 4.  Jane Eyre: (dramatisation of novel by 
Charlotte Bronte). Radio 4, l994.  The Jungle Book: (five-part 
dramatisation of stories by Rudyard Kipling). Radio 5, l994. Power Cut: 
short story. Radio 4, l994.  Body of Glass: (dramatisation of novel by 
Marge Piercy). Radio 4, l995.  Ethan Frome : (dramatisation of novel by 
Edith Wharton). Radio 4, l997. The Piano: (serial dramatisation of 
novel by Jane Campion and Kate Pullinger). Radio 4, l995. Pride and 
Prejudice (dramatisation of novel by Jane Austen. (BBC World Service, 
1996). The Queen of Spades original play based on Pushkin short story. 
Radio 4, l997. The Moonstone, (dramatisation of novel by Wilkie 
Collins) BBC  World Service. 1998. Hemlock and After  (dramatisation of 
novel by by Angus Wilson).  Radio 4,  l999.  Corridors of Light and 
Shadow  (original play with music, set in Mantua.) Radio 3,  l999. In 
The Cage by Henry James. Dramatised for Radio 4, 1999. The Clock of 
Heaven (original play about Longitude). Radio 4, 1999.  A Country House 
   (dramatisation of story by Dorothy Edwards). Radio 4, 2000.
Of Abrupt Self,  (play about John Blow’s Ode on the Death of Purcell)  
Radio 4,  2000. National Velvet  (dramatisation of novel by Enid 
Bagnold) Radio 4, 2001. The Holiday (dramatisation of novel by Stevie 
Smith)  Radio 4. 2001. The Millstone (dramatisation of novel by 
Margaret Drabble), Radio 4. 2002. Via Angelica  short story. Radio 4. 
2002. Enchantment, original play. Radio 4, 2002. Out of Sweetness, 
original play. Radio 3, 2002. The Little Photographer (dramatisation of 
story by Daphne du Maurier).  Radio 4, 2003. Zuleika Dobson 
(dramatisation of novel by Max Beerbohm), Radio 4, 2003. The Perfect 
Courtier  (original  play about Benvenuto Cellini), Radio 3, 2003.

MUSIC
Various words and music programmes, as well as libretti for various 
composers, including York (l990) and The Mask of Esther (2002) with 
Malcolm Singer, words and music concert programmes with own early music 
group, SIENA, on Salamone Rossi, Benvenuto Cellini, Shakespeare and the 
Dark Lady of the Sonnets. SALAMONE ROSSI HEBREO MANTOVANO,  CD of music 
by Salamone Rossi, 2002.

Royal Literary Fund Fellowship 204-2005
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