Caryl Phillips

Caryl Phillips (born March 13, 1958 ) is an English-language writer, playwright and essayist. It is of British African-Caribbean origin because it comes from St. Kitts and Nevis . He is known for several novels, for which he has won numerous awards. His fictional works are shaped by the self-discovery processes and experiences of people from the African diaspora in England , the Caribbean and the United States . In addition to his writing activities, Phillips has worked at a number of academic institutions, such as Amherst College , Barnard College and Yale University , where he has held the post of Professor of English since 2005 .

Life

Caryl Phillips was born on March 13, 1958 in St. Kitts . His parents were Malcolm and Lillian Phillips . When he was four months old, his family moved to England and lived in Leeds , Yorkshire . In 1976 Phillips got a place at Queen's College, Oxford University , where he took courses in English and graduated in 1979. In Oxford he made a name for himself directing numerous dramas and spent his summers doing jobs as a stage worker (stagehand) at the Edinburgh Festival . After graduation he moved to Edinburgh, where he lived on unemployment benefits for a year, during which time he wrote his first play, Strange Fruit (1980), which was performed by the Crucible Theater in Sheffield . Phillips moved to London, where he wrote two more pieces: Where There is Darkness (1982) and Shelter (1983). These pieces were performed at the Lyric Hammersmith .

At the age of 22 he visited St. Kitts for the first time since his family moved in 1958. The trip provided inspiration for his first novel The Final Passage , which was published five years later. After the publication of his second book, A State of Independence (1986), Phillips went on a month-long journey through Europe, the experiences of which he processed in his essay collection The European Tribe 1987. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Phillips lived alternately in England and St. Kitts while working on his novels Higher Ground (1989) and Cambridge (1991).

In 1990 Phillips accepted the position of visiting writer at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts . He stayed at Amherst College for eight years and became the youngest English Tenured Professor in the United States when he was promoted to the post in 1995. During this time he wrote the novel Crossing the River (1993), with which he won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize . He was also on the shortlist for the Booker Prize . After taking up the position in Amherst, Phillips followed a "triangular lifestyle" (a sort of triangular thing) for several years, with apartments in England, St Kitts and the United States.

However, this lifestyle was "incredibly exhausting" and "prohibitively expensive", so that Phillips ultimately decided to give up his residence in St. Kitts, even though he returns regularly for visits. In 1998 he went to Barnard College at Columbia University as Henry R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order . In 2005 he went to Yale University , where he has been a professor of English ever since. He was elected an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2000 and an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2011 .

Works

Phillips has examined issues of the African slave trade from numerous angles and his writings deal with issues of "origins, belongings and exclusion". An excellent example of this is his novel The Lost Child (2015). Phillips 'work has garnered numerous awards including the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize , a Guggenheim Fellowship , the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Crossing the River in 1993 and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book award for A Distant Shore in 2004.

Also the PEN / Beyond Margins Award for Dancing in the Dark 2006.

bibliography

Novels

• The Final Passage (Faber and Faber 1985. ISBN 978-0-571-13437-3 ; Picador, 1995, paperback ISBN 978-0-571-13437-3 )
• A State of Independence (Faber and Faber 1986. ISBN 978-0-571-13910-1 ; paperback ISBN 978-0-571-19679-1 )
• Higher Ground: A Novel in Three Parts (Viking 1989. ISBN 978-0-670-82620-9 )
• Cambridge (Bloomsbury 1991; Vintage 2008. paperback ISBN 978-0-09-952056-6 )
• Crossing the River (Bloomsbury 1993. ISBN 978-0-7475-1497-8 )
• The Nature of Blood (1997; Vintage 2008. paperback ISBN 978-0-09-952057-3 )
• A Distant Shore (Secker 2003. hardback ISBN 978-0-436-20564-4 ; Vintage 2004. paperback ISBN 978-0-09-942888-6 )
• Dancing in the Dark (Secker 2005. ISBN 978-0-436-20583-5 )
• Foreigners: Three English Lives (Harvill Secker 2007. ISBN 978-0-436-20597-2 )
• In the Falling Snow (Harvill Secker 2009. hardback ISBN 978-1-84655-306-6 ; Vintage 2010. paperback ISBN 978-0-09-953974-2 )
• The Lost Child (Oneworld Publications 2015. hardback ISBN 978-1-78074-699-9 , paperback ISBN 978-1-78074-798-9 )
• A View of the Empire at Sunset: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux May 22, 2018. hardback ISBN 978-0-374-28361-2 )

Essay Collections

• The European Tribe (Faber and Faber 1987.)
• The Atlantic Sound (Faber and Faber 2000. ISBN 978-0-571-19620-3 )
• A New World Order: Selected Essays (Martin Secker & Warburg 2001. ISBN 978-0-436-20560-6 )
• Color Me English (Harvill Secker 2011. paperback ISBN 978-1-84655-305-9 )

Editing

• Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging (Faber and Faber 1997. ISBN 978-0-571-19086-7 )

drama

• The Shelter (Amber Lane Press 1984. ISBN 978-0-906399-49-1 )
• Playing Away (Faber and Faber 1987. ISBN 978-0-571-14583-6 )
• A Kind of Home - James Baldwin in Paris. ( BBC Radio 4 , January 9, 2004)
• Hotel Cristobel ( BBC Radio 3 , March 13, 2005)
• A Long Way from Home (BBC Radio 3, March 30, 2008)

Awards

• 2011 Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
• 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize , A Distant Shore
• 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize , Crossing the River
• 2000 Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 1994 Lannan Literary Award
• 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize , Crossing the River
• 1993 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1987 Martin Luther King Memorial Prize , The European Tribe
• 2012 Best of the James Tait Black , Shortlist, Crossing the River

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jaggi 2001; Low 1998; Bewes 2006.
2. ↑ Methi 2009; Phillips 2005-2010.
3. ↑ Jaggi 2001; Phillips 2009.
4. ↑ Jaggi 2001; Metcalfe 2010
5. ↑ Jaggi 2001; British Council
6. ^ Jaggi 2001.
7. ↑ Jaggi 2001; Phillips 2010; Bell 1991: 585-586.
8. ^ Jaggi 2001.
9. ↑ Eckstein 2001.
10. ↑ Jaggi 2001; Swift 1992.
11. ↑ Bell 1991: 558-559
12. ↑ Phillips 1995: 156.
13. ^ Jaggi 2001.
14. ^ Booker Prize Foundation.
15. ↑ Phillips 1995.
16. ↑ Phillips 1995.
17. ^ British Council.
18. ↑ Phillips 2005-2010.
19. ↑ Phillips 2005-2010b.
20. ↑ Gerard Woodward : "The Lost Child by Caryl Phillips, book review: Wuthering Heights relived in post-war Britain." In: The Independent , March 26, 2015.
21. ^ "A Kind of Home: James Baldwin in Paris" , Friday play , BBC Radio 4.
22. ↑ "Hotel Cristobel" , Drama on 3 , BBC Radio 3rd
23. ^ "A Long Way from Home" , Drama on 3 , BBC Radio 3.
24. ^ "A Long Way from Home". Caryl Phillips, Drama on 3 , BBC.
25. ^ Russell Leadbetter: Book prize names six of the best in search for winner . In: Herald Scotland . October 21, 2012. Retrieved October 21, 2012.
26. ↑ Authors in running for 'best of best' James Tait Black award . In: BBC News . October 21, 2012. Retrieved October 21, 2012.

literature

• C. Rosalind Bell: Worlds Within: An Interview with Caryl Phillips. In: Callaloo. Summer 1991, vol. 14, 3: 578-606. doi = 10.2307 / 2931461
• Timothy Bewes: Shame, Ventriloquy and the Problem of Cliche in Caryl Phillips. In: Cultural Critique. Spring 2006, vol. 63: 33-60. doi = 10.1353 / cul.2006.0014
• British Council: Caryl Phillips. 2012.
• Lars Eckstein: The Insistence of Voices: An Interview with Caryl Phillips. [1] In: Ariel. April 2001, vol. 32, 2: 33-43.
• Maya Jaggi: Caryl Phillips: The Guardian Profile. In: The Guardian. November 3, 2001.
• Gail Low: A Chorus of Common Memory: Slavery and Redemption in Caryl Phillips' "Cambridge" and "Crossing the River". In: Research in African Literatures. Winter 1998, vol. 29, 1: 121-141.
• Anna Metcalfe: Small Talk: Caryl Phillips. In: The Financial Times. June 21, 2010.
• Caryl Phillips & Jenny Sharpe: Of this Time, of that Place. In: Transition 1995, vol. 68: 154-161 doi = 10.2307 / 2935298
• Caryl Phillips: I prefer not to raise my head above the parapet (an interview with Anita Methi). In: The Independent. May 22, 2009.
• Caryl Phillips: Once upon a life. In: The Observer (Observer Magazine), October 17, 2010: 14.
• Caryl Phillips: Biography: Education and Teaching. 2005–2010, Caryl Phillips: The Official Website.
• Caryl Phillips: Biography: Awards . In: Caryl Phillips . 2005-2010b. Retrieved September 10, 2012.
• Graham Swift: Caryl Phillips (To Interview). BOMB, bombsite.com, Winter 1992 vol. 38.
• Françoise Charras: De-Centering the Center: George Lamming's “Natives of My Person” (1972) and Caryl Phillips's “Cambridge” (1991). In: Maria Diedrich, Carl Pedersen, Justine Tally (ed.): Mapping African America: History, Narrative Form and the Production of Knowledge . LIT, Hamburg 1999: 61-78.
• Maroula Joannou: "Go West, Old Woman": The Radical Re-Visioning of Slave History in Caryl Phillips's "Crossing the River". In: Brycchan Carey, Peter J. Kitson (ed.): Slavery and the Cultures of Abolition: Essays Marking the Bicentennial of the British Abolition Act of 1807 . DS Brewer, Cambridge 2007.
• Bénédicte Ledent: Caryl Phillips . Manchester University Press, Manchester 2002.
• Sofia Muñoz-Valdivieso: “Amazing Grace”: The Ghosts of Newton, Equiano and Barber in Caryl Phillips's Fiction [2] In: Afroeuropa 2008, 2, 1.
• Evelyn O'Callaghan : Historical Fiction and Fictional History: Caryl Phillips's "Cambridge". In: Journal of Commonwealth Literature 1993, 29.2: 34-47.

Web links

• Caryl Phillips' Official Website
• bibliography
• Caryl Phillips' Writers Page at The British Council
• Phillips at Yale University
• The Caryl Phillips Papers at the Beincke Rare Book and Manuscript Library , Yale University
• "Lost Child" Author Caryl Phillips: "I Needed To Know Where I Came From" , NPR interview, March 21, 2015.