Gail Wronsky

I was born in Harrisburg PA and grew up in various places including several small towns in eastern Pennsylvania and suburban Detroit. I attended Kalamazoo College for two years then transferred to the University of Virginia where I was given an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Wagenheim Scholarship for Creative Writing, and received a BA in English. Returning to UVA as a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Poetry Writing, I finished an MFA degree, working intermittently as a waitress and as a nurses' aid at UVA Hospital. My chapbook of poems, Dogland, was published by Alderman Press at UVA in 1981.

I spent a year teaching English at the Foxcroft School in Virginia. I entered the Ph.D. program in English at the University of Utah in '82 and studied with Mark Strand, Larry Levis, Karen Lawrence, Barry Weller, Henry Staten, and David Kranes. My play Wave's Home for Hurtin' Tammies was developed at the Sundance Institute Playwriting Conference in the summer of 1982, directed by Julie Taymor. The play was produced the following year by the Salt Lake Acting Company, directed by David Chambers. A piece of mine called "Gothic Hats" was produced by a dance company in affiliation with Repertory Dance Theater, Salt Lake City.

I finished the Ph.D. in 1986, married Chuck Rosenthal, and moved with him to Los Angeles where we both began teaching at Loyola Marymount University. Our daughter, Marlena, was born in 1987. We met Alicia Partnoy (poet) and Antonio Leiva (documentary filmmaker) our dear friends and artistic collaborators in 1998.