Shawna Virago

SHAWNA VIRAGO is a songwriter celebrated for her striking lyric-based songs. Her songs twist together folk, alt-country and punk. Virago 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 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. The Advocate named her song “Objectified,” as one of the nation’s top Transgender Anthems. Her last single “Heaven Sent Delinquent (Electric Single Mix)” (Tranimal Records) was featured in many national publications and year-end best-of lists.

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, Take Me There, and Transnational Queer Underground. She is the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival and her films have screened at festivals throughout the world.