Carl Phillips is a prolific, highly lauded poet with a career spanning several decades. He has published a total of twenty books: sixteen books of poetry, three books of prose, and a translation of Sophocles’s Philoctetes. 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 and winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Phillips was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006, and from 2011 to 2020 he served as the judge for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. He is a Professor of English at Washington University of St. Louis.
