Phillip B. Williams
Professor of Creative Writing
Phillip B. Williams is a Chicago, IL native and currently on tour with his new novel, OURS, published by Penguin/Viking in 2024. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Thief in the Interior, which was the winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and Mutiny, which was a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and the winner of a 2022 American Book Award. Williams is also the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts.
His work, which has been published in POETRY, The New Yorker and Boston Review among others, centers around questions of identity, social change, and the connection between language and corporeality.
Research Areas
Creative Writing: Poetry, Creative Writing: Fiction, Contemporary Poetry, Queer Poetry and Poetics, Black Poetry and Poetics, Black Surrealist Literature
Education
MFA, Washington University St. Louis
BA University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Honors & Awards
2025 – James Tait Black Prize in Fiction (finalist)
2025 – VCU Cabell First Novelist Award (shortlist)
2023 – Pew Fellowship from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
2022 – American Book Award
2022 – Thom Gunn Poetry Award/Publishing Triangle (finalist)
2022 – PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry (shortlist)
2022 – PEN/Jean Stein Prize (longlist)
2021 – National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry
2020-2021 – Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University
2018 – Pushcart Prize (for poem “from ‘Interruptive’”, first appearance in Poetry)
2017 – Whiting Award
2017 – Bread Loaf Writers Conference: Fellow in Poetry
2017 – Kate Tufts Discovery Award
2017 – Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry
