Written with the engaged eye of a flâneur and the intrepid curiosity of a new journalist, Phillips’s essays range from travelogues to character studies to personal history. Specializing in unexpected details and idiosyncratic perspectives, Phillips profiles the British royal family through a catalog of the items in the queen’s handbag and the people in her retinue, describes Russian animator Yuri Norstein in the present-tense of a screenplay, and investigates Area 51 through the stories of people suffering PTSD after being abducted by aliens. A former Grantland writer whose work has been featured in Best American Sports Writing and Best American Magazine Writing, Phillips is compulsively readable on topics as varied as tigers in India, the Iditarod, and an oil tycoon from his hometown, Ponca City, Oklahoma.
Phillips will be in conversation with Josh Levin, editorial director at Slate and cohost of their Hang Up And Listen sports podcast.
