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recent articles
2016
- "Chinua Achebe: It is the storyteller who makes us see what we are"
- The Massachusetts Review
- Spring 2016, pp. 60-65
- I’d like to say a few things about Chinua Achebe, which hopefully resonate somewhat with our title-“It is the Storyteller who makes us see what we are.” I’ve been thinking about this title and have come to the conclusion that in the case of Chinua Achebe he was also a Storyteller who made us see who we are, or at least he certainly did in my case.
- Read the full article
2015
- "Finding The Lost Child"
- Work in Progress: The Latest From the Front Lines of Literature, Presented by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
- May 2015
- Living inside a book for many years it is perhaps inevitable that one loses sight of what the book is actually about. That is, if one ever really knew in the first place. Writers move stealthily, and almost always by instinct. However on completing a manuscript one is forced to describe to agents, editors, friends, and family the subject-matter of these months and years of furtiveness. So, what is your book about? It’s at this point that the full extent of the myopia is laid bare. “I’m afraid I’m not sure” will not suffice as an answer. Neither will, “Can you give me a little more time to disengage myself and make sense of things?” In the end I usually find myself talking about what led me to the book, for this is a subject I can tip-toe around with some degree of confidence.
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2014
- "75 at 75: Caryl Phillips on Derek Walcott."
- 92nd Street Y: Poetry Center Online
- April 2014
- Caryl Phillips responds to a reading by Derek Walcott as part of the 92nd St Y's project, "Poetry Center Online: Celebrating 75 Years of the Unterberg Poetry Center".
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2011
- "High Strung by Stephen Tigor - review"
- The Guardian
- Friday September 9, 2011
- Borg vs McEnroe: one of the greatest rivalries in tennis history. A review of Stephen Tigor's High Strung: Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, and the Untold Story of Tennis's Fiercest Rivalry.
- Read the full article
- "Book Of A Lifetime: Native Son, By Richard Wright"
- The Independent
- Friday August 5, 2011
- The American author Richard Wright is most famous for this one book. It was his first novel, and on its publication in 1940, it became one of the fastest-selling novels in American literary history: a remarkable feat for a 32-two-year old, largely self-educated, man from Mississippi. It would be fair to say that it changed his life forever. He went on to write many other books, both fiction and non-fiction, but at the time of his death, at the young age of 52 in 1960, many of the obituary notices made reference to Wright as the author of just this one book, 'Native Son'.
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2010
- "Once upon a life: Caryl Phillips"
- The Observer
- Sunday October 17, 2010
- Newly graduated from university, Caryl Phillips headed to Edinburgh to find the peace to write, exploring its Georgian streets with wonder. Until his dole payments were stopped, and things began to look grim…
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2009
- "Wright & Wronged: The Story of African-American Golfer Bill Wright"
- Golf Magazine
- September 2009
- Fifty years ago, Bill Wright was an ambitious young golfer with boundless potential, a historic win at a national championship, and one insurmountable handicap: the color of his skin.
- Read the full article
2007
- "Writer's Room"
- The Guardian
- Friday November 2, 2007
- This is from a column for The Guardian in 2007, for which they photographed writers' rooms and asked the writer to say a few words.
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- "Where Time Stands Still"
- The Guardian
- Saturday September 22, 2007
- Simon Schama's book Rough Crossings records the lives of those who suffered as slaves on Bunce Island. Caryl Phillips, who has adapted their stories for the stage, recalls his pilgrimage to 'this miserable place.'
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- "Blood at the Root"
- The Guardian
- Saturday August 18, 2007
- So horrific are the images conjured up by 'Strange Fruit' that Billie Holiday always performed it with her eyes closed. Caryl Phillips, who used the title for his first play, traces the song's dark history.
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- "The Price of the Ticket"
- The Guardian
- Saturday July 14, 2007
- In 1953, James Baldwin, a hard-up writer in Paris, published the extraordinary novel Go Tell it on the Mountain. Four years later he sailed home to the United States to immerse himself in the civil rights movement. Caryl Phillips explores the historic consequences of his return.
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2006
- "Finding Oneself at Home"
- The Guardian
- Saturday January 21, 2006
- Both Angela Carter and Natsume Soseki found new insights into their respective homelands when living abroad. Caryl Phillips reflects on the role of the writer as 'outsider.'
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2005
- Northern Soul
- Caryl Phillips returns to Leeds to see how the city of his youth has changed.
- The Guardian
- Saturday October 22, 2005
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- Growing Pains
- A boy learns about family secrets and life in race-conscious Britain, in an autobiographical story by Caryl Phillips.
- The Guardian
- Saturday August 20, 2005
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- The Power of Love
- Luther Vandross died earlier this month, aged only 54. Caryl Phillips pays tribute to one of the most popular and influential soul singers of the 20th century.
- The Guardian
- Saturday July 30, 2005
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- To Ricky With Love (Introduction to Vintage edition of To Sir With Love by E.R. Braithwaite)
- E. R. Braithwaite's classic tale of a West Indian teacher in an East London school, To Sir With Love, still has much to tell us about race and class in Britain.
- The Guardian
- Saturday July 23, 2005
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- The Height of Obsession
- Last year, Caryl Phillips found himself bragging to a bar full of students about how he had climbed Kilimanjaro. By the end of the evening, he had agreed to do it again, with novelist Russell Banks—but this time by a more difficult route. Here is the story of their ascent to the highest point in Africa.
- The Guardian
- Saturday May 21, 2005
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- Do You Come Here Often?
- Caryl Phillips salutes Lucas Radebe, the South African who set the standard on and off the pitch for African footballers in England.
- The Observer Sports Monthly
- Sunday May 8, 2005
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- Lost Generation
- At the end of the 1970s, black British theatre was booming. So why hasn't a play by a black writer appeared in the West End since then?
- The Guardian
- Saturday April 23, 2005
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- Obituary: Constance Webb
- Writer wife of C. L. R. James.
- The Guardian
- Friday April 15, 2005
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- Foreword to Book of Voices (In support of Sierra Leone PEN)
- Flame Books
- January 2005
2004
- Necessary Journeys
- Twenty years ago, Caryl Phillips was an aspiring writer fleeing Britain's race and class stereotypes. Seeking a richer sense of identity he embarked on an odyssey across Europe and beyond.
- The Guardian
- Saturday December 11, 2004
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- Kingdom of the Blind
- Britain became a multicultural society in the 1950s, but, with a couple of exceptions, white playwrights and novelists do not seem to have paid much attention. Caryl Phillips asks why are there so few black characters in British fiction.
- The Guardian
- Saturday July 17, 2004
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- Women Writing the West Indies 1804-1939: A Hot Place Belonging to Us (A review of a book of the same title by Evelyn O'Callaghan)
- Times Literary Supplement (p.29)
- May 21, 2004
- West Indian Intellectuals in Britain (A review of a book of the same title edited by Bill Schwarz)
- Times Literary Supplement (p.30)
- May 14, 2004
- Something About Her (A review of Not Without Love by Constance Webb)
- Times Literary Supplement, p.10
- April 23, 2004
2003
- A Beacon in Dark Times
- A poet writing 150 years ago defined the Statue of Liberty as 'the mother of exiles.' As America prepares to celebrate Thanksgiving next week, Caryl Phillips reflects on the very different welcome its immigrant communities receive today.
- The Guardian
- Saturday November 22, 2003
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- American Tribalism
- I arrived in Amherst, Massachusetts in the fall of 1990 with the understanding that I would be spending a year teaching in a liberal arts college. I had not thought about exactly who I would be teaching, beyond the fact that they would be Americans. When I walked into my classroom on that first morning I was greeted by a rainbow coalition of faces; black, white, brown, yellow. Even at an institution as famously conservative as Amherst College, diversity seemed to be a wonderfully natural part of the make-up of the campus culture.
- The American Effect
- Global Perspectives on the United States, 1990-2003
- Whitney Museum of American Art
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- Distant Voices
- Civil war devastated Sierra Leone in the 1990s, and today it is the poorest country in the world. Caryl Phillips travels to the capital, Freetown, and meets the writers struggling to make a living there, to record past events, and to understand how they might contribute to the future.
- The Guardian
- Saturday July 19, 2003
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- Out of Africa
- Chinua Achebe, father of modern African literature, has long argued that Joseph Conrad was a racist. Caryl Phillips, an admirer of both writers, disagrees. He meets Achebe to defend the creator of Heart of Darkness but finds their discussion provokes an unexpected epiphany.
- The Guardian
- Saturday February 22, 2003
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- Confessions of a True Believer
- Shusaku Endo was a Japanese Catholic whose fiction explored the conundrum of his faith. He was an unlikely inspiration for Caryl Phillips, who analyses the enduring appeal of a great novelist.
- The Guardian
- Saturday January 4, 2003
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2002
- People of the Year
- Ignored, resented jeered and mocked—a youngest sister moves coolly to greatness.
- The Guardian
- Saturday December 21, 2002
- Read the full article
