Born in 1958 in St Kitts, an island of the Eastern Caribbean, Caryl Phillips arrived in England with his parents when he was only four months old. He spent most of his childhood in a working-class neighbourhood of Leeds, an environment in which Phillips and his three brothers were often the only black children. This sense of being an outsider also defined his time as a student of English Literature at Oxford University. After graduating in 1979, Phillips embarked very early on a successful writing career, first as a playwright then as a novelist and an essayist. After spending a few years in his native St Kitts in the early 1980s, he was writer-in-residence in universities in India and Sweden, to finally become a professor of English in the United States, first at Amherst College,...
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Citation: Ledent, Benedicte. "Caryl Phillips". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 February 2026 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3553, accessed 20 March 2026.]
