Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Rowan led a College Readiness after-school workshop for SpeakTogether at Union Settlement in East Harlem on April 26, 2017. Rowan also performed on stage for Seriously Entertaining at City Winery on September 22, 2015, speaking on the evening’s theme, “Altered States.” Watch it below.

Rowan Ricardo Phillips is the author of three books of poems (The Ground, Heaven, and Living Weapon) and two essay collections (The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey and When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness). His screenplay for the film Clemente, based on Pulitzer-Prize winner David Maraniss’ biography of baseball icon Roberto Clemente, is set to be directed by Oscar-winner Ezra Edelman. Phillips’ awards include a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, and the Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award. He teaches at Williams College and Princeton University.

In his own words: “The sign on the door of my life hasn’t said, Writer. And yet I write. I’ve always written. But that’s because I’ve always read.”

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