Phillippa Yaa de Villiers lectures in Creative Writing at Wits University, Johannesburg, and is a Distinguished Alumnus of Rhodes University Journalism and Media Studies (2022). She is a board member of the African Poetry Book Fund. She worked as a television screenwriter for ten years studied at the Lecoq School of Theatre in Paris. Her one-woman show Original Skin (2008) toured nationally and to Germany. She wrote Taller than buildings (2006), The everyday wife (2010, winner of the 2011 South African Literary Prize) and ice- cream headache in my bone (2017). She was the 2014 Commonwealth Poet. She co-edited The Poems of Keorapetse Kgositsile (2023) alongside Uhuru Phalafala. Her work appears in Relations (2023, ed Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond), New Daughters of Africa (2019 ed. Margaret Busby), Yellow Means Stay (2019 ed. Afritondo Books) among others, including the journals Wasafiri, Baobab, Konch, Stanzas and New Coin. She has performed at various local and international poetry festivals, including Poetry Africa (2022, 2007 and 2010), the Berlin Poesiefestival (2009, 2011) and many more.
