About

Camellia Phillips has loved writing since first grade, back in the days of graphite-stained fingers. Since then, her short fiction has appeared in CALYX Journal and cream city review, and been recognized as a finalist in the Glimmer Train Fiction Open contest. Her middle grade manuscript, Rat, Jack, and the Impossible Job, won Scribbler's first-ever Manuscript Contest and the 2021 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest. She holds an MFA in creative writing from The New School and received a writing residency at Blue Mountain Center. She is also co-curator of the Guerrilla Lit Reading Series. 

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As someone living with chronic illness, Camellia is now learning to reflect that lived experience in writing for children. 

 

Camellia is also a longtime writer and leader with social justice organizations and was selected as a 2019 92Y Women inPower Fellow, a program for rising women leaders in New York City.

 

Born and raised in Washington State, Camellia resides in Brooklyn, NY, and Melilli, Sicily, with her husband, novelist Marco Rafalà.