Carl Phillips facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Carl Phillips
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| Born | July 23, 1959 |
| Education | Harvard University (BA) University of Massachusetts, Amherst (MA) Boston University (MA) |
| Employer | Washington University in St. Louis |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for Poetry The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards Jackson Poetry Prize Lambda Literary Award Los Angeles Times Book Prize |
| Partner | Doug Macomber (1992–2007) Reston Allen (2013–present) |
Carl Phillips (born 23 July 1959) is an American writer and poet. He is a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2023, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020.
Early life
Phillips was born in Everett, Washington. He was born a child of a military family, moving year-by-year until finally settling in his high-school years on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. A graduate of Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Boston University, Phillips taught high-school Latin for eight years.
Works
His first collection of poems, In the Blood, won the 1992 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, and his second book, Cortège, was nominated for a 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award. His Pastoral won the 2001 Lambda Literary Award for Poetry. Phillips' work has been published in The Yale Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker and The Paris Review. He was named a Witter Bynner Fellowship in 1998 and in 2006, he was named the recipient of the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, given in memory of James Merrill.
In 2002, Phillips received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, for The Tether. In 2004, he published All It Takes. He won the Thom Gunn Award in 2005 for The Rest of Love.
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In 2015, Phillips released his 13th collection of poems, Reconnaissance, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Best Poetry and appeared on the Top Books list from Canada's The Globe and Mail. Phillips was also a featured poet in the "Picture and a Poem" series for T: The New York Times Style Magazine in December 2015. Reconnaissance won the Lambda Literary Award and the PEN Center USA Award.
Philips latest book to be published, Then the War: And Selected Poems (2022), won the Pulitzer Prize in 2023. Then the War is described by his publisher as "luminous testimony to the power of self-reckoning and to Carl Phillips as an ever-changing, necessary voice in contemporary poetry".
Recognition
Phillips is a four-time finalist for the National Book Award. He received the 2002 Kingsley Tufts Award and the 2021 Jackson Poetry Prize. He was also the named a winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
Phillips was a judge for the 2010 Griffin Poetry Prize. In April 2010, he was named as the new judge of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, replacing Louise Glück. In 2011, he was appointed to the judging panel for The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards. His collection of poetry, Double Shadow, was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award for poetry. Double Shadow won the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Poetry category).
Phillips was a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2008 to 2012. and he was nominated for the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize for Silverchest.
The Board of Trustees of The Kenyon Review honored Carl Phillips as the 2013 recipient of the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement. Philips has also held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, and the Academy of American Poets, for which he served as chancellor from 2006 to 2012.
Phillips was shortlisted for the 2024 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, alongside Karen McCarthy Woolf, Raymond Antrobus, Gboyega Odubanjo, Rachel Mann and others.
