Caryl Phillips is a world-renowned playwright and novelist. His novels Crossing the River and A Distant Shore both won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2004 and 2006 respectively. He was the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993 and was awarded the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize for his essay collection The European Tribe in 1987. He is Professor of English at Yale University. His novels include The Final Passage, The Atlantic Sound, A State of Independence, Higher Ground, Cambridge, Crossing the River, The Nature of Blood, A Distant Shore, Dancing in the Dark, The Lost Child, and A View of the Empire At Sunset.