Creative Writing Past Faculty

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Rowan Ricardo Phillips headshot

Photo by Sue Kwon

About

Rowan Ricardo Phillips is the author of three books of poetry (The GroundHeaven, and Living Weapon), two books of non-fiction (When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness and The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey), and a translation from the Catalan of Salvador Espriu's landmark short-story collection, Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth. Phillips is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award, the Pen/Osterweil Prize for Poetry, the Anisfield-Wolf book award, and the GLCA New Writers Award. He has also been a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry, the NAACP Image Award for Poetry, and has been a long-listed finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award. The Circuit was the winner of the 2019 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting. His work has been selected as a book of the year by NPR, one of the best poetry collections of the year by The Washington Post among others, and has been featured twice in Best American Poetry. His poetry has been translated into Catalan, German, Italian, Norwegian and Spanish. His screenplay for the film Clemente, based on Pulitzer Prize-winner David Maraniss' biography of baseball icon Roberto Clemente, is set to be directed by Oscar-winner Ezra Edelman. Phillips is the Margaret Scott Bundy Professor of English at Williams College and teaches Creative Writing at Princeton. He lives in New York City, Williamstown, and Barcelona.

NEWS + LINKS

PEN America Awards Announced, Rowan Ricardo Phillips Wins in Poetry | Poetry Foundation, 2013

Rowan Ricardo Phillips wins 2019 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing | PEN America, 2019

Phillips’ poetry collection Living Weapon will be published in 2021 in the UK by Faber | The Bookseller news, September 2020

Featured Essay: “Looking Back on Baseball’s Silent Season” | The New York Times Magazine, October 28, 2020

Living Weapon named among the Books of the Year | Australian Book Review, December 2020

Featured Essay: “Justice for the Negro Leagues Will Mean More Than Just Stats” | The New York Times Magazine, March 23, 2021

Phillips’ poem, “November Nocturne,” from his book Living Weapon is included in the Forward Book of Poetry 2022 | Faber & Faber, September 16, 2021

Living Weapon named among Best Poetry Books of 2021 | The Guardian, December 6, 2021

 

 

 

 

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