Carl Phillips is a prolific, highly lauded poet with a career spanning several decades. He has published sixteen books of poetry, two books of criticism, and one meditation on the writing process. Phillips earned a BA from Harvard, an MAT from the University of Massachusetts, and an MA in creative writing from Boston University. His poetry is influenced by his education in the Classics as well as the work of the metaphysical poets, in particular George Herbert and John Donne. Phillips’ work is lyrical and contemplative, exploring themes of nature, identity, and sexuality. He has received numerous awards including an Academy of American Poets fellowship, a literature award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, the Jackson Poetry Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Award, and a Pushcart prize. He is a four-time National Book Award finalist. Phillips was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006, and from 2010 to 2020 he served as the judge for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. On May 8 2023, Phillips was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). He is a Professor of English at Washington University of St. Louis.