Pamela Spiro Wagner

Pamela Spiro Wagner attended Brown University from 1970-1975. She later went to medical school for one and a half years, before being hospitalized for psychiatric care. While Wagner has experienced much adversity in her life including the decades-long diagnosis of schizophrenia, she was also lucky enough to have been given four life-changing miracles. The passion to do poetry and art were just two of these. She currently resides in Brattleboro, Vermont, with her cat, Beanie Baby, where she disavows all labels, including those of any mental illness.

Wagner won First Place in the 2001/2 international BBC World Service Radio Poetry Competition, judged by Nobelist Wole Soyinke for her poem “The Prayers of the Mathematician.” In 2005, she co-authored, with her twin sister, a psychiatrist, DIVIDED MINDS: Twin Sisters and their Journey through Schizophrenia (St Martin’s Press), which won the national NAMI Outstanding Literature Award and was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award. Four years later, Ms Wagner’s book of poems, WE MAD CLIMB SHAKY LADDERS was published by CavanKerry Press (2009) and was a finalist for Foreward Review’s Poetry Book of the Year. Recently several poems won have honorable mentions at New Millennium Writings and two have also been short-listed for the Bridport Prize in the UK. Her writing has appeared in the The New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Hartford Courant, and Tikkun among other places. Her third book of poetry and art, LEARNING TO SEE IN THREE DIMENSIONS was published by Green Writers press and Sundog Poetry Center in June 2017.