Marketing Information

Unseen Worlds Articles:

"Suffering Memory:" The Unseen Worlds of Marilène Phipps

Segullah Interview

Boston Globe Article

The Lowdown, Jackie Bussjaeger

House of Fossils Article:

Pluton Magazine

Interviews with Marilene:

Reader's Almanac Interview

Open Source Radio

Voices from Haiti

Island to Island

Unseen Worlds Awards:

Next Generation Indie Book Awards 2020 Winner.

House of Fossils Awards:

National Indie Excellence Award (NIEA) Finalist.

International Book Awards Finalist.

Kirkus Reviews, The Best Books 2020.

Reviews

The Poetry of Unseen Worlds:

"Lightning struck the tall tree sheltering my father's tomb in the garden of my childhood," opens Marilène Phipps arresting, bewitching new memoir Unseen Worlds: Adventures at the Crossroads of Vodou Spirits and Latter-day Saints (Calumet), and the sentence holds in it the mystery, power, and poetry that unfolds. Phipps, a poet, painters, and writer. . . writes of her life in Haiti, of the deaths of her father, her brother ("the first gentle moon I knew"), her husband, Ali (when he dies of lung cancer she "lit a candle and howled under the swimming pool"). She writes of Catholicism, Islam, Vodou, of a tarantula in her crib, of the way death, "the great scandal of our lives," does and does not end us. We are given a history of Haiti as well as the crumple and collapse in the aftermath of the earthquake in 2010. Phipps's language is lush, sinuous, each paragraph holds poetry, and her Unseen Worlds is undeniably a memorable memoir. —Nina MacLaughlin, Boston Globe.

Kirkus Review for House of Fossils.

Author Biography

Marilène Phipps held fellowships at the Guggenheim Foundation, Harvard's Bunting Institute, W.E.B. DuBois Institute and the Center for the Study of World Religions. Her collection, The Company of Heaven: Stories from Haiti, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her poetry won the 1993 Grolier poetry prise, and her collection, Crossroads and Unholy Water won the Crab Orchard Poetry Prize. She has contributed to American anthologies and colections such as The Best American Short Stories; Haiti Noir; The Classics; The Beacon Best; Ploughshares; River Styx; Callaloo; and Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and she edited Jack Kerouac Collected Poems for The Library of America. Phipps is the recipient of the NAACP's Award for Excellence for outstanding commitment in advancing the culture and causes for communities of color.

Other works by Marilene Phipps include: The Company of Heaven and Crossroads and Unholy Water.

Her works have also appeared in the following anthologies: Haiti Noir 2: The Classics ("Land"), So Spoke the Earth: A Haiti Anthology ("From Haiti with Love"), The Best American Short Stories ("Marie-Ange's Ginen"), The Butterfly Way: Voices of Haitian Descent in the United States, Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry, Others Will Enter the Gates: Poets in America on the Emigre Experience, Jack Kerouac Collected Poems (Editor), Poets for Haiti, New Caribbean Poetry, Brassage, The Beacon Best of 1999, Creative Writing by Women and Men of all Colors, Sisters of Caliban: Poets of the Carribbean, and Grolier Poetry Prize.