M. NourbeSe Philip is Kapnick Writer-in-Residence, September 2026
The University of Virginia Creative Writing Program is pleased to announce our incoming Kapnick Foundation Distinguished Writer-in-Residence for 2026-2027 is celebrated poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright M. NourbeSe Philip.
Philip will be on Grounds for the month of September to read from her work and deliver craft talks at public events as well as working closely with the students in our writing programs. While in residence, Philip will be an integral part of the Creating Writing community, bringing a richness and complexity of language, history, memory and culture to the ongoing work of the word.
The Poetry Foundation writes, "M. NourbeSe Philip was born in Tobago. She earned a BSc from the University of the West Indies and an MA and LLB from the University of Western Ontario. Philip was a practicing lawyer for seven years before turning full-time to writing. She is the author of works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Her collections of poetry include Thorns (1980); Salmon Courage(1983); She Tries Her Tongue (1989); Her Silence Softly Breaks (1988), which won a Casa de las Américas Prize for Literature; and Zong! (2008), a polyvocal, book-length poem concerning slavery and the legal system."
Philip's monumental and celebrated book Zong! , a "182 page poetry cycle [...] composed entirely from the words of the case report, Gregson vs. Gilbert, related to the murder of Africans on board a slave ship at the end of the eighteenth century", remains a "haunting lifeline between archive and memory, law and poetry".
“A brash, unsettling book, Zong! wants to chant or shout history down, shut history up… Fretful, possessed, obsessed, upset, curse and homeopathy, both, it visits a breathtaking run of glossolalic scat upon historical trauma.”
We are grateful for the generous support of the Kapnick Foundation who makes this residency possible and the annual Kapnick Fellowship in Creative Writing, held for the 2026-2027 year by poet Tola Sylvan.
Information about these forthcoming events will be made available here: https://creativewriting.virginia.edu/events. And you may view a calendar schedule of events here: https://creativewriting.virginia.edu/uva-creative-writing-program-calendar-events
(Photo by Gail Nyoka)