I am happy to share exciting news with you about the acclaimed author, essayist and playwright who has agreed to be the University of Virginia’s next Kapnick Distinguished Writer-in-Residence.

Caryl Phillips, a seminal figure in Transatlantic literature whose work has explored the African diaspora in the Caribbean, England and the United States, will visit Grounds this spring, April 11-22. He is the second writer in the program supported by the Kapnick Foundation Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Endowment, and in the tradition of William Faulkner’s legendary residencies at the U.Va. in the 1950s, the program aims to bring writers of international stature to the University to teach and engage with students and the literary community.

Phillips will present a seminar and meet one-on-one with accomplished writers in our graduate and undergraduate programs to offer them critiques of their work. During his time on Grounds, he also will deliver a public lecture on a literary topic of his choosing, as well as a public reading. The Kapnick Lectures delivered last fall by our inaugural Kapnick writer, the late novelist James Salter, drew large audiences, and I expect that Phillips’ presence will ensure the same enthusiastic response.

For those unfamiliar with Phillips’ award-winning work, I encourage you to explore his website: www.carylphillips.com. Born on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and raised in England, Phillips studied English Literature at Oxford University and is the author of 10 novels, four plays and five works of nonfiction. His literary awards include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award and a Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book in 2004 for his novel, A Distant Shore.

His 1993 novel Crossing the River was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won Britain’s oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. That same year, Phillips was named on the Granta list of “Best of Young British Writers.” In 2006, his eighth novel, Dancing in the Dark, won the PEN/Beyond the Margins Award.

His most recent novel, The Lost Child, was published this spring to glowing reviews.

Phillips recasts Wuthering Heights by imagining Heathcliff’s life before he’s brought to the moors of northern England as an orphan. The novel blends two other stories to Heathcliff’s narrative. One depicts novelist Emily Bronte’s final days as she confuses the details of her novel Wuthering Heights with her family life. The other focuses on a young female university student in the late 1950s who aspires to be a writer and who falls in love with a fellow student from an unnamed British colony.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts and a recipient of the 2013 Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Award for Excellence, Phillips has taught at universities in Ghana, Sweden, Singapore, Barbados and India.  As a professor, his teaching has focused on contemporary literature in English from around the world. Currently, he is a professor of English at Yale University. We look forward to his arrival on Grounds in the spring with great anticipation.