Xan Phillips

Xan Forest Phillips is an American poet and visual artist from rural Ohio.

Education
In 2014, Phillips received a Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College, where he majored in Creative Writing and minored in Africana Studies. While at Oberlin, he served as a board member for the Center for Women and Trans People and completed a two-year research fellowship in Black Poetics.

He received a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Virginia Tech in 2016.

Writing
Phillips’ poetry has been featured in BOMB, Poets.org, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Offing, The Journal, Nashville Review, Ninth Letter, Scalawag, Best Experimental Writing, and We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics.

Painting
Phillips' painting has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Poetry Project, and American Poets Magazine.

Awards and distinctions
Phillips has received fellowships from Oberlin College, Cave Canem (2016–2017), The Conversation Literary Festival (2018),  Callaloo, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing (2019–2020), Brown University (2020–2021), and University of Pittsburgh's Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (2021–2023).

In 2020, he received Lambda Literary's Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers.

Publications

 * Reasons for Smoking (2018)
 * Hull (2019)

Anthology contributions

 * Bettering American Poetry Volume 2, edited by Amy King, Jayy Dodd, Camile Rankine, Muriel Leung, Sarah Clark, Michael Wasson, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, and Héctor Ramírez (2017)
 * Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, edited by Joanne V. Gabbin and Lauren K. Alleyne (2019)