Michelene Wandor (also known as Michelene Victor) is an English playwright, critic, broadcaster, poet, musician, and lecturer. She was born in 1940 to Russian-Jewish émigrés and studied English at the University of Cambridge. She gained Masters degrees in the Sociology of Literature from the University of Essex and in Music from London University/Trinity College of Music. Since 1969, Wandor has been active in the Women’s Liberation Movement. She has adapted numerous novels for BBC Radio, including works by Jane Austen and George Eliot. With The Wandering Jew (1987), she is the first woman to have a play performed on one of the National Theatre’s main stages. She wrote the theatre studies Carry On, Understudies: Theatre and Sexual Politics (1986, expanded version of Understudies, 1981) and Post-war British Drama: Looking Back in Gender (2001, original edition Look Back in Gender, 1987). Her recent poetry reflects her background and the history of Jews in Britain. Michelene Wandor teaches Creative Writing at Lancaster University. Wandor’s most recent book is Orfeo’s Last Act: a novel in two parts (Greenwich Exchange, 2023).

She describes herself to be “a good Jewish atheist”. The 350th anniversary of the Jew’s return to England, during Cromwell’s era, in 1657, is commemorated through Music of the Prophets in 2007.

For more information visit http://www.mwandor.co.uk/index.htm.