Papers of Dennis Phillips, Los Angeles poet, novelist and professor in the Humanities and Science Department at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Dennis Phillips Papers, 1970-2008 (MSS 223)
Extent: 16 Linear feet (40 archives boxes, 1 map case folder), + 95.7 GB of digital files
Dennis Phillips was born in 1951. In 1973 Phillips earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, graduating from the California Institute of the Arts. In 1974 he moved to New York City, where he undertook a year of study in the Graduate Classics Department at New York University. From 1979 to 1980, Phillips taught literature and writing with the Humanities Department at Otis Parsons Art Institute, and at the same time assumed responsibilities as poetry editor at L.A. Weekly. His experience there as editor led to becoming the book review editor at the literary magazine Sulfur. From April 1985 until July 1988, Phillips served as Director and President of Beyond Baroque, the new writing collective located in Venice, California.
Phillips has authored over a dozen books of poetry, including Frontier (1980), The Hero is Nothing (1985), A World (1989), Means (1991), Arena (1991), 20 Questions (1992) and most recently, Measures (2013). Additionally, his work has also appeared in several poetry journals, and his first novel, Hope, was published in 2007 by Green Integer Books. Phillips currently holds the position of senior instructor in the Department of Humanities and Sciences at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California where he has been teaching since 1979.
Papers of Dennis Phillips, Los Angeles poet, novelist and professor in the Humanities and Science Department at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Phillips was L.A. Weekly's first poetry editor, a founding editor of Littoral Books, the book review editor for the literary magazine Sulfur and he co-edited the poetry section of New Review of Literature. Phillips's papers contain manuscripts and typescript drafts of his published and unpublished poetry, as well as typescript drafts of a small body of unpublished (or privately published) prose works, plays, and screenplays. The collection also includes two correspondence series.
Accession Processed in 1993
Arranged in two series: 1) WRITINGS and 2) CORRESPONDENCE.
Accession Processed in 1999
Consists primarily of annotated drafts of Phillips's writings, correspondence (1972-1998) and notebooks (1990-1995). Arranged in three series: 3) CORRESPONDENCE, 4) WRITINGS and 5) MISCELLANEOUS MATERIAL.
Accession Processed in 2019
Annotated drafts of Phillips's first novel Hope, in both paper and digital formats. The material consists of one series: 6) WRITINGS - HOPE.