Caryl Phillips was born March 13th, 1958 in St. Kitts, West Indies

He was raised in Leeds, England

Graduated from Oxford University with a degree in English literature

Novelist, playwright, essayist, and professor

Currently lives in New York and teaches at Yale

The Final Passage (1985) - debut novel

Crossing the River (1993) - Booker Prize shortlist

The Nature of Blood (1997)

A Distant Shore (2003) - Commonwealth Writers' Prize

Dancing in the Dark (2005) - PEN/Beyond Margins Award

Awards:

• Commonwealth Writers' Prize

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize

• Guggenheim Fellowship

• Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

• Martin Luther King Memorial Prize