Known for her poetic prose and her in-depth study of family dynamics, Phillips is the author of Black Tickets, Machine Dreams, Shelter, and Motherkind. The critically acclaimed writer has received a number of 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.