Featured ARTIST - 24ND July 2020
SHAWNA VIRAGO is a transgender trickster celebrated for her striking lyric-based songs. Her music twists together folk and punk, offering raw observations about survival in a predatory world, queer love,
and sticking up for the underdog. Virago is celebrated as a
music pioneer – she was one of the nation's first openly
transgender women to perform and tour nationally, and
has performed as an out transwoman since the early
1990's.
Virago's performances are a fusion of original songs,
storytelling and standup. Virago has been profiled
online, in print and on radio including Bitch, Louder
Than War, No Depression, Paste magazine, on NPR and
PBS, and on left-of-the-dial radio.
Shewired named Virago as one of the nation's "Top 25
Hot Femmes." The Advocate named Virago's song
'Objectified' as one of the nation's top transgender
anthems.
Virago is the Artistic Director of the San Francisco
Transgender Film Festival. Virago is also a filmmaker, and
her music video Transsexual Dominatrix has screened at more
than 30 film festivals around the world, and was awarded Best
Music Video at New York's CineKink Festival.
Virago is a published writer and her work appears in Gender
Outlaws: Next Generation and in the anthologies Trans/Love:
Radical Sex, Love & Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary
and Take Me There. Virago has been featured in
documentaries aired on PBS and NPR. Virago has composed
original soundscores for transgender choreographer
Sean Dorsey.