Reading: Phillip B. Williams (Poet/Novelist)
Author's reading/talk, Q & A, and book signing event: Chicago native, poet and novelist Phillip B. Williams is the author of two chapbooks and four full-length poetry collections, including Thief in the Interior (Alice James Books 2016), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award; and Mutiny (Penguin 2021), a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and the winner of a 2022 American Book Award. Winner of France’s Prix du Premier Roman Étranger, his debut novel, Ours (Viking 2024), was named Oprah Daily’s most anticipated title of 2024, as well as Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, People, Los Angeles Times, and NPR. Williams's newest collection of poems, Lift Every Voice, is scheduled for release this year on Penguin Books.
In addition to being finalist for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature (Poetry) and twice awarded the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, Phillip B. Williams is also the recipient of a 2017 Whiting Award, a 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a Kenyon Review Writers Workshop fellowship, and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. His work explores Black surrealism, folklore, and spirituality, along with themes of identity, social change, and the connection between language and corporeality.
He currently teaches in the MFA in creative writing program at New York University and is founding faculty of the Randolph College Low-res MFA