Jayne Anne Phillips

Jayne Anne Phillips was born and raised in Buckhannon, West Virginia. She studied at West Virginia University before receiving an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She published her first book a chapbook called Sweethearts, in 1976. Her third book, a short story collection titled Black Tickets (1979), brought her widespread acclaim, earning accolades from writers including Tillie Olsen and Raymond Carver. That book also won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Since then, Phillips has published six novels and three short story collections. Her work has been nominated for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. Night Watch won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Phillips considers Night Watch to be the third novel in a trilogy that began with her first novel, Machine Dreams, and continued with her novel Lark and Termite. That thematic trilogy explores the impacts of war in three different conflicts—the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the U.S. Civil War.