Jayne Anne Phillips (b. 1952) rose directly among the brightest stars of American literature with her first collection of short stories, Black Tickets (1979). Raymond Carver praised the “crooked beauty” of Phillips' stories and it is thanks to him that she is now known as a writer who "is in love with the American language". Phillips' language is layered and sensual; it is exact to the minutest detail: each and every word is meaningful. Black Tickets has since become a classic of the short story genre. Phillips' highly acclaimed and many times awarded production - two collections of short stories and three novels - has been translated into twelve languages, including Finnish. Her running theme is the family, particularly the relationship between mother and daughter. In Phillips' words, "the family is our spiritual blueprint". Our first intimacies with mother and father, sisters and brothers, and our native home are the elements from which we build ourselves in endless permutations, even if we should leave home and the family become dispersed. In her early production, Phillips describes without sentimentality people on the margins of society, prostitutes, madmen, murderers and lonely people who are left without protection and security from a family. It is only in her latest novel, MotherKind, that the family appears as the stronghold of happiness. Although the setting of the novel is highly explosive, the threats and violence described by Phillips in her earlier works are no longer there. The independent thirty-year-old Kate becomes the mother of a family when her husband brings two wild boys from an earlier marriage into their union and she herself gives birth to a third son. At the same time, in the nest of her new family, Kate takes care of her mother, who is dying of cancer. The novel paints the cycle of motherhood and daughterhood, birth and death - in other words, time - but also focuses on how to survive the demands of everyday life. Phillips first participated in the Lahti International Writers' Reunion as early as in 1983.
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