Born in Tobago, m. nourbeSe philip is an unembedded poet, essayist, novelist and playwright who lives in the space-time of Toronto. A former lawyer, her published works include the award-winning YA novel, Harriet’s Daughter, the seminal poetry collection, She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks, the speculative prose poem, Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence, as well as her genre-breaking book-length epic, Zong!. She has written several collections of essays in- cluding Frontiers: Essays and Writings on Racism and Culture and A Genealogy of Resistance; her most recent collection is BlanK.

philip is a fellow of the Guggenheim and Rockefeller (Bellagio) Foundations. In 2020 she was the recipient of PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, then in 2021 the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize by the Canada Council for her outstanding achievement in the arts. In 2023 she was the Bain-Swiggett Chair in Poetry at Princeton for the Spring semester. In 2024, she became a recipient of the Windham Campbell Award for Poetry.

Sponsored by the St. Louis & Horn Endowments and the Department of English