Award-winning author Phillip Bannowsky writes on the human and mundane vs. the historical juggernaut. Long stretches as Navy brat, autoworker, international educator, college adjunct, and activist stock his arsenal.
Bannowsky was born a war baby in 1944 in Oakland, California. His father was a distinguished Navy pilot and Texan, his mother was an administrative professional, and his family saw the world.
As a Navy dependent, Bannowsky learned the life of an outsider/new-kid-on-the-block in 13 schools from California to Virginia, Hawaii, France, and Newfoundland, where he graduated from High School in 1962
Phillip Bannowsky has been writing poetry, fiction, news articles, op-eds, political broadsides, and performance pieces for roughly 50 years, but his bread and butter was factory labor. Upon winning a 1963 Academy of American Poets Prize (judged by Robert Lowell) at the University of Delaware, he began serially dropping out of college, but not before joining the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), now a dear group of old friends. Ultimately, he hired on at Chrysler Corporation, where he worked for 31 years, mostly humping the line, but sometimes rabble rousing as a union reformer, sometimes elected as a representative, sometimes lobbying on behalf of the union for criminal justice reform, and finally cooling his worn-out bones in Quality Assurance.
Meanwhile, he published a chapbook, The Milk of Human Kindness (Dreamstreets Press, 1986), and created his performance piece Autoplant: a Poetic Monologue in 1991 (published 2007, Broken Turtle Books), with which he sharpened his performance chops at regional venues including college campuses, bookstores, and Fringe Festivals in both Philadelphia and Wilmington. Studying both full- and part-time, he earned a BA in English in 1989 and an MA in Literature and Pedagogy in 1991, both from UD.
On leave from Chrysler from 1992 to 1995, he was promoted to chair of a high school English department at an American school in Ecuador, an experience he mined for his novel, The Mother Earth Inn (Broken Turtle Books, 2007).
After he retired from the assembly line in 2001, he again taught overseas, again as secondary English chair, this time in Lebanon, just as the continuing Iraq hell-disaster exploded. Finally, he taught as an adjunct at UD, where he directed a study abroad program in Ecuador, taught a course on the 60s for a few years and another on The Poetry of Empowerment, as well as the standard fare of first year composition for both native and non-native learners.
Despite his many heresies, Bannowsky has twice been awarded grants by the Delaware Division of the Arts, first for his novel The Mother Earth Inn (Broken Turtle Books, 2007) and then, for his latest work, Jacobo the Turko: a novel in verses (Broken Turtle Books, 2021).
His news stories, featured articles, and op-eds have appeared in Delaware State News, The News Journal, The Heterodoxical Voice, The Delaware Valley Star, Delaware Alternative Press, Tangent, Taproot, NACLA Report on the Americas, The Progressive, and Common Dreams.
Recent poems have appeared in Dreamstreets Magazine, Broadkill Review, Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas, The Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies News, armarólla, Meat for Tea: the Valley Review, Psychedelic Press Journal (UK), About Place Journal, and the antholoiesg Bad Hombres and Nasty Women (The Raving Press, 2017) and Wayfinding (Finishing Line Press, 2021).
Additionally, Bannowsky is a contributing editor at Dreamstreets Magazine, devoted to contemporary and historical Delaware writers. He is also publisher of Broken Turtle Books.
Bannowsky has wed twice and raised two sons, a stepdaughter, and a nephew. He now lives in Newark, Delaware with his wife since 1991, Joan French, an activist and educational leader. Pandemic permitting, he and Dr. Joan travel, camp, kayak, watch birds, attend concerts at a state park, celebrate life with an extended family, and struggle for justice.