Listen to Jayne Anne Phillips read from "Lark and Termite"

The Ransom Center has acquired the papers of American novelist Jayne Anne Phillips. Phillips has published six novels and story collections over the last three decades. Her most recent work is Lark and Termite (2009).

Phillips visited the Ransom Center recently and recorded a reading of Lark and Termite.

Known for her poetic prose and her in-depth study of family dynamics, Phillips has received critical acclaim and major literary prizes, including a Guggenheim fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Phillips is professor of English and director of the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing at Rutgers University, Newark.

The acquisition contains manuscripts in multiple states for Black Tickets (1979), Machine Dreams (1984), Shelter (1995), Motherkind (2000), and Lark and Termite, as well as dozens of individual short stories and essays, some never published. Phillips’s school records, early writings, family photographs, notebooks, business documents, fan mail, and related ephemera provide insight into the writer’s life, writing process, family relationships, and publishing history.