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"Chinua Achebe: It is the storyteller who makes us see what we are"
The Massachusetts Review
Spring 2016, pp. 60-65
I’d like to say a few things about Chinua Achebe, which hopefully resonate somewhat with our title-“It is the Storyteller who makes us see what we are.” I’ve been thinking about this title and have come to the conclusion that in the case of Chinua Achebe he was also a Storyteller who made us see who we are, or at least he certainly did in my case.
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"Finding The Lost Child"
Work in Progress: The Latest From the Front Lines of Literature, Presented by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
May 2015
Living inside a book for many years it is perhaps inevitable that one loses sight of what the book is actually about. That is, if one ever really knew in the first place. Writers move stealthily, and almost always by instinct. However on completing a manuscript one is forced to describe to agents, editors, friends, and family the subject-matter of these months and years of furtiveness. So, what is your book about? It’s at this point that the full extent of the myopia is laid bare. “I’m afraid I’m not sure” will not suffice as an answer. Neither will, “Can you give me a little more time to disengage myself and make sense of things?” In the end I usually find myself talking about what led me to the book, for this is a subject I can tip-toe around with some degree of confidence..
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"75 at 75: Caryl Phillips on Derek Walcott."
92nd Street Y: Poetry Center Online
April 2014
Caryl Phillips responds to a reading by Derek Walcott as part of the 92nd St Y's project, "Poetry Center Online: Celebrating 75 Years of the Unterberg Poetry Center".
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'From Northern Lights', Remember Oluwale, (UK: Valley Press, 2016) pp. 31-32.
'Chinua Achebe: It is the storyteller who makes us see what we are', The Massachusetts Review, Spring 2016, pp.60-65.
'Caryl Phillips: Reading my way back to the past, and the moors', The Guardian, September 8, 2015.
'Finding The Lost Child', Work in Progress: The Latest From the Front Lines of Literature, Presented by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, May 2015.
'A Life in Ten Chapters', The Excellent Decade, (Trinidad and Tobago: Paria Publishing, 2015) pp. 143-145.
'What is Africa to Me Now?', Research in African Literatures, Volume 46, Number 4, Winter 2015, pp. 10-14.
'Derek Walcott: The Journeyman Years, Occasional Prose 1957-1974, Volumes 1 and 2, Edited by Gordon Collier', Wasafiri, Fall 2014.
'Revisiting The European Tribe', Wasafiri, Volume 79, Fall 2014, pp. 4-7. Also published in The Cross-Cultural Legacy: Critical and Creative Writings in Memory of Hena Maes-Jelinek, ed. Gordon Collier, Geoffrey V. Davis, Marc Delrez, and Benedicte Ledent (2017), pp. 121-129.
'John Edgar Wideman', interview conducted by Caryl Phillips, BOMB: The Author Interviews, ed. Betsy Sussler. (Soho Press, November 2014) pp. 439-450. [Originally published in Bomb Magazine, 49 (Fall 1994), pp. 34-37].

"Caryl Phillips: Interview"
Mosaic: Literary Arts of the Diaspora
March 19, 2012
Caryl Phillips discusses his writing and his thoughts about literature with Clarence Reynolds.
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"The Narrative Is Not Written in Stone"
SX Salon: A Small Axe Literary Platform
February 25, 2012
Bastian Balthazar Becker interviews Caryl Phillips about his latest book, Color Me English.

"The Books Interview: Caryl Phillips"
New Statesman
August 22, 2011
Sophie Elmhirst interviews Caryl Phillips about his new book, Color Me English.

"Discomfort zone: Author Caryl Phillips explores issues of multiculturalism"
The Times Union
July 11, 2011
Elizabeth Floyd Mair interviews Caryl Phillips about his new book, Color Me English.