Jessica Hagedorn
Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn (born May 29, 1949) is an American playwright, writer, poet, and multimedia performance artist.
Also recorded as Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn
Jessica Hagedorn

David Shankbone · CC BY 3.0
- Born
- 1949. · Manila.
- Nationality
- United States.
- Occupation
- playwright, poet, narrator, musician, performance artist, novelist and writer.
- Fields
- poetry.
- Education
- American Conservatory Theater.
- Known for
- Dogeaters and Dream Jungle.
- Honours
- Guggenheim Fellowship, American Book Awards, National Book Award and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
- Languages
- English.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
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Documentary summary
Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn (born May 29, 1949) is an American playwright, writer, poet, and multimedia performance artist.
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Authority files
wikidata · Q465222 · wikipedia · Jessica Hagedorn
In this article
Biography
Biography
Jessica Hagedorn studied at American Conservatory Theater. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is poetry. Works named in the authority record are Dogeaters and Dream Jungle. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship, American Book Awards, National Book Award and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Hagedorn is an of mixed descent. She was born in Manila, Philippines, to a mother of Scots-Irish, French, and Filipino descent and a father of Filipino, Spanish, and Chinese heritage. Moving to San Francisco, California, in 1963, Hagedorn received her education at the American Conservatory Theater training program. To further pursue playwriting and music, she moved to New York City in 1978. In 1978, Joseph Papp produced Hagedorn's first play, Mango Tango. Hagedorn's other productions include Tenement Lover, Holy Food, and Teenytown. Her mixed media style often incorporates song, poetry, images, and spoken dialogue. From 1975 until 1985, she was the leader of a poet's band—The West Coast Gangster Choir (in SF) and later The Gangster Choir (in New York). In 1985, 1986, 1989, and 1994 she received MacDowell Colony fellowships, which helped enable her to write the novel Dogeaters, which illuminates many different aspects of Filipino experience, focusing on the influence of America through radio, television, and movie theaters. She shows the complexities of the love-hate relationship many Filipinos in diaspora feel toward their past. After its publication in 1990, her novel earned a 1990 National Book Award nomination and an American Book Award. In 1998 La Jolla Playhouse produced a stage adaptation. In 2001, the play adaptation premiered off-Broadway at The Public Theater. Hagedorn worked with playwrights and artists Robbie McCauley and Laurie Carlos as the collective Thought Music, which later expanded to include visual artist John Woo as well. Together Thought Music created a number of works including Teenytown (presented at La Mama in 1987) and class (presented at The Kitchen in 2000). Thought Music together investigated race, class, sexism, and the role of immigrants in the United States. Hagedorn, with Thought Music and on her own, has also collaborated with Urban Bush Women on works including Heat and Lipstick. Hagedorn lives in New York City with her daughters.
Literary works
Literary works
Chiquita Banana. Third World Women (3rd World Communications, 1972) Pet Food & Tropical Apparitions (Momo's Press, 1975) Dangerous Music (Momo's Press, 1975) Mango Tango (Y'Bird Magazine, January 1, 1977) Dogeaters (Penguin Books, 1990) Danger and Beauty (Penguin Books, 1993) Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction (editor) (Penguin Books, 1993) The Gangster of Love (Houghton Mifflin, 1996) Burning Heart: A Portrait of the Philippines (with Marissa Roth) (Rizzoli, 1999) Dream Jungle (Viking Press/Penguin), 2003) Toxicology (Penguin Books, 2011)
Anthologies that include Hagedorn's work
Anthologies that include Hagedorn's work
Four Young Women, ed. Kenneth Rexroth (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973). Time To Greez! Incantations From the Third World, eds. Janice Mirikitani, et al. (San Francisco: Glide Pubs., 1975). American Born and Foreign: An Anthology of Asian American Poetry, eds Fay Chiang, et al. (New York: Sunbury Press Books, 1979). Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Poets, ed. Joseph Bruchac (New York: Greenfield Review Press, 1983). The Open Boat: Poems From Asian America, ed. Garrett Hongo (New York: Doubleday, 1993). Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth, eds Karen Kelly and Evelyn McDonnell (New York: New York University Press, 1999). Stage Presence: Conversations with Filipino American Performing Artists, ed. Theodore S. Gonzalves (San Francisco and St. Helena: Meritage Press, 2007). The Soho Press Book of 80s Short Fiction, ed. Dale Peck (New York, NY: Soho Press, 2016).

Grace Jones
New York Amsterdam News
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
1949
Jessica Hagedorn born at Manila.
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q465222: Jessica Hagedorn
Reputable secondary · Wikimedia Foundation
- “Jessica Hagedorn”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
scholarly publication
- Jessica Hagedorn and Manila Magic, MELUS, 1993
Scholarly · Crossref registry · 1993
Awards and fellowships
Hagedorn's novel Dogeaters earned a 1990 National Book Award nomination and an American Book Award. Hagedorn, alongside bell hooks, June Jordan, and seven others, won the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund annual Writer's Awards in 1994 and they received $105,000 each. In 2006, Hagedorn was one of the first eight playwrights to receive the Lucille Lortel Foundation fellowship. In 2021, Hagedorn was the recipient of the Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation's 2021 Idea Awards for Theatre, winning The Tooth of Time Distinguished Career Award and $20,000. Hagedorn, in collaboration with Two River Theater, is also working on a musical detailing the rise of Jean and June Millington of Fanny.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Nakao, Annie. Hagedorn's reel life dreams / A San Francisco-raised author's apocalyptic roman a clef. San Francisco Chronicle. November 2, 2003.
- 2.Sengupta, Somini. Cultivating The Art Of the Melange. The New York Times. 1996-12-04. 0362-4331.
- 3.Living Writers Series: Jessica Hagedorn – The Humanities Institute. thi.ucsc.edu.
- 4.Cucinella, Catherine. Contemporary American women poets : an A-to-Z guide. Greenwood Press. 163–167. 2002. 978-1-4294-7550-1.
- 5.Jessica Hagedorn - Artist. MacDowell.
- 6.Jacolbe, Jessica. The Filipino Novel That Reimagined Neocolonial Gender. JSTOR Daily. 2019-06-19.
- 7.ABOUT JESSICA HAGEDORN. www.jessicahagedorn.net. 26 October 2010.
- 8.Teenytown Robbie McCauley. robbiemccauleyncompany.com.
- 9.class The Kitchen Archive. archive.thekitchen.org.
- 10.Carr, C. On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century. Wesleyan University Press. 2012-04-09. 9780819572424.
- 11.Heat The Kitchen Archive. archive.thekitchen.org.
- 12.Jacobs Pillow Archive: Moving image: Urban Bush Women [295]. archives.jacobspillow.org.
- 13.National Book Foundation. Dogeaters Finalist, National Book Awards 1990 for Fiction. nationalbook.org.
- 14.10 Writers Win Grants. The New York Times. 1994-12-22. 0362-4331.
- 15.Robertson, Campbell. Arts, Briefly; Lortel Playwriting Awards. The New York Times. 2006-10-31. 0362-4331.
- 16.Adams and Reisch Foundation Announces 2021 Idea Awards Winners. AMERICAN THEATRE. 2021-04-26.
- 17.Miller, Deb. Presentation of the 2021 Idea Awards for Theatre. DC Metro Theater Arts. 2021-04-28.
- 18.Mishan, Ligaya. The Asian Pop Stars Taking Center Stage. The New York Times. 2021-08-11. 0362-4331.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 1
- Seiwoong Oh: Encyclopedia of Asian-American Literature. Series: Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Literature. Facts on File, 2007
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
scholarly publication
Jessica Hagedorn and Manila Magic, MELUS, 1993Crossref registry
Verifiedreference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q465222: Jessica HagedornWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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