She studied at the Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography in her hometown for three years, before deciding to leave without obtaining a degree.
She immigrated to Israel from her native Leningrad in 1988, passing through and living in Riga with her husband Nekod Singer for three years before eventually settling down in Jerusalem where they currently reside.
The early years of her literary career took place in Russia, though she never participated in writing groups and only read her poetry to "her father and an older friend.
[1] Her artistic development began in Israel, where she not only started expressing herself in other such media platforms as visual arts, photography and book illustrations, but also worked on extending her poetic breadth by writing in other languages (e.g. English and Hebrew) and translating existing pieces of literature.
The bulk of her career, distinctions and legacy has concerned Russian and Hebrew literature, poetry and translations.
In 2001, she published another Russian collection of poetry called To Think: River which would become the first piece of her own literature that she would translate into Hebrew.
[3] One year later, Singer became the editor in chief of another Russian-Hebrew bilingual journal called Dvojetochije-Nekudataim[3] and published the following poetry compilations: Blind Poems and Yarusarim Besieged.
[4] In the late 80's, it was impossible for Singer and her husband to leave the Soviet Union from Leningrad to Israel, so they became Refuseniks and moved to Riga where it was more possible to emigrate from.
Singer has strove for successful integration in spite of the 1990s post-Soviet Aliyah, i.e. a time characterized by numerous and successive waves of immigration from the Post-Soviet States to Israel, which produced among certain newcomers a near-imperialist conception of Russian culture, whereby arts and other such cultural elements were valued more if they originated in Russia than if they were produced in Israel .
On a similar note, Singer has worked to immerse herself in her Jewish heritage all while preserving her Russian identity, and in doing so has partaken in forming a new culture which she does not view in any dimmer light than that of her former homeland.
For instance, she has made a point of learning Hebrew so as to step outside the Russian cultural enclave that could have kept her at odds with the Israeli majority.
On a similar note, she observed that we choose neither our birthplace nor our mother tongue--which is the foundation of a person's writing--so the arduous struggle at hand, which is as artistic as it is cultural, is characterized by the strive to find and express oneself using new words.
"[5] In an interview[1] for Poetry International conducted by Lisa Katz, an English-language editor,[7] Gali-Dana provided some detail concerning her experience learning Hebrew, and how she likened it to Russian: "[...] The fact that I am so close to language in my Russian poems is what caused my proximity to Hebrew.
"[1] Her love of language has driven her journey toward mastering Hebrew, and has inevitably shaped her approach toward integrating to Israeli life and culture.
"[1] Finally, Mendelson-Maoz writes that Gali-Dana "maintains that the difficulty in learning a language lies not in the intellectual sphere but in the mental one.
That being said, it was after explaining Singer's claim that the roots of our mother tongue are ineradicable that Mendelson-Maoz wrote the aforementioned statement.
He relates these three ideas to explain how Gali-Dana's experience with language, especially as a translator, shaped many of her views on multiculturalism in Israel.
Gali-Dana Singer has been praised for her approach to Hebrew, and is held in high regard in the Russo-Israeli literary community for grasping the language of Israel and stepping beyond her linguistic comfort zone.
In fact, Ya'ara Ben David, another Israeli poet, said the following on the reluctance of certain Russian immigrants in the face of learning Hebrew and on the steps needed to integrate as a collective with this Middle-Eastern environment: "In many cases, adherence to the mother tongue stems from a psychological difficulty to become receptive to new experience.
Her sensitivity to poetic language in general and the way she manages the challenges of Hebrew in particular explain her widespread use of word play and rhyme.
According to Maoz, it is precisely this "[multilingual and] intellectually desirable and balanced"[5] approach to literature and poetry that make up her case in favour of multiculturalism, which Gali-Dana encourages through her artistic platforms.
"[5] Finally, in the interview with Lisa Katz, the interviewer asked for Singer's thoughts concerning the fact that English poetry has had a greater influence over Hebrew literature than Russian poetry has in the previous four decades, to which Gali-Dana replied: "I'm not so afraid of the influence of English because I think everything comes in its own time; there have been periods with other poetics and aesthetics.
Beh-do-ir, Ra'anana, Even Hoshen (as a translator) 2017, Translucent (in Hebrew) N/A, "I'm Not Christina Rossetti But I Also Read Tennyson, Told Cecilia in Praise of Lesser Gods" (in English) Gali-Dana Singer I'M NOT CHRISTINA ROSSETTI BUT I ALSO READ TENNYSON, TOLD CECILIA IN PRAISE OF LESSER GODS[9] As of 2020, she is currently working with American poet Stefan Ellis on a collaborative project called "Other or Some: A Collaborative Poetry Project.
Furthermore, she has translated numerous poems and has been a leader in workshops tasked with creating Russian and Hebrew anthologies.
מרוסית - אמיר אור, רות בלומרט, זלי גורביץ', מרדכי גלדמן, מרים נייגר-פליישמן, פטר קריקסונוב והמשוררת.
שיח משוררים : אנתולוגיה דו-לשונית של תרגומים עבריים לשירה הנכתבת בישראל בשפה הרוסית.עורכים גלי-דנה זינגר, פטר קריקסונוב.