Emilia Phillips

Photo by Diewke van den Heuvel, 2025

In residence: November - December 2025

Emilia Phillips (they/them) is an American poet and author of five poetry collections from the University of Akron Press, including Nonbinary Bird of Paradise (2024) and Embouchure (2021), as well as four chapbooks. Their poetry, creative nonfiction, and book reviews have appeared widely in journals and anthologies. Phillips is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English, MFA in Writing Program, and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

In Svalbard, Phillips will work on their sixth poetry collection, Planned Obsolescence. The collection positions four interwoven losses, the erosion of their mother’s memory to Alzheimer’s, the destruction of ecological habitats (in North Carolina and those witnessed during the July 2025 Arctic Circle Artist & Scientist Residency Program), the diminishing safety for queer and trans people, and the unlearning of internalised notions about gender, sexuality, monogamy, and other institutions, at a nexus of fault lines to examine how they shift, collide, and transform one another.

Instagram: @emdashphillips