AFTER taking her autobiographical one-woman show, Original Skin to the Market Theatre, and the Grahamstown Festival, and the national schools festival in winter 2008, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers will be performing her poetry at the Women's Festival in August and Darling's Voorkamerfest in September 2008. After winning the runner-up best writer award and the audience appreciation award in the Pansa Festival of Contemporary Theatre Readings in 2005, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers started exploring her poetic voice.

In 2005 she was completed Crossing Borders, a distance learning mentorship scheme initiated by the British Council and Lancaster University. From 1998-2008 she developed a career in television writing, she has written for Backstage, Tsha Tsha, Thetha Msawawa, Takalani Sesame and Soul City among many other television shows. She collaborated with Swedish writer Charlotte Lesche and Pule Hlatshwayo to write Score, which was broadcast on SABC and Swedish Television. She has represented South Africa at the 12th International Poetry Festival in Havana, Cuba, and at Word Power Festival in the UK, as well as Poetry Africa in 2007, and in 2008 at Solidariteit in Sweden.

After winning a grant from the Centre for the Book in November 2006, she published her first volume of poetry, Taller than Buildings, which is now in its third edition.