Phyllis Barber has published six books, including How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir; And the Desert Shall Blossom, a novel; The School of Love and Parting the Veil: Stories from a Mormon Imagination (short stories); plus two children's books, as well as pieces in many literary magazines such as Kenyon Review, North American Review, Fiction International, The Chariton Review, The Missouri Review, Cimarron Review, Quarterly West, Crazyhorse, among others. She received Special Mention in Pushcart Prize XIII (1988) for "Wild Sage" and Distinguished Western Story Mention in Best of the West 6 for "At the Talent Show" and Best of the West 3 for "Criminal Justice" (also appearing in Crosscurrents’ Best Fiction Anthology, July 1994). In 1996 she received first prize in the Sunstone D.K.Brown Fiction Competition for "Mormon Levis."

In 1991, she received the Associated Writing Program Award Series Prize in Creative Nonfiction for How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir. In 1993, the book was also awarded Best Autobiography by the Association for Mormon Letters. Excerpts appear in several anthologies, including Fourth Genre; Literary Las Vegas: The Best Writing about America’s Most Fabulous City; Frame Work: Culture, Storytelling and College Writing, among others. The book and author were featured on an episode of NBC’s “Today” in 1997, and in 2004 they were featured as a subject in Faithful Transgressions in the American West: Six Twentieth Century Mormon Women’s Autobiographical Acts by Laura L. Bush (Utah State University Press). She is included in two state anthologies: A Great and Peculiar Beauty: a Utah Reader (1995) and Home Means Nevada: Literature of the Silver State (forthcoming in 2006).

In 1988, the author received first prize in the Utah Fine Arts Literary Competition for "Criminal Justice" (short story category) and And the Desert Shall Blossom (novel category). This novel was chosen by the Utah Endowment for the Humanities for The Book Group Library Series.

A member of the faculty of the Vermont College MFA in Writing Program since 1990, she received the Louise Crowley & Roger Weingarten Award for Excellence in Teaching in Summer, 1999. She also taught as a Visiting Writer at the University of Missouri in Columbia (Spring 1994). She is a co-founder of the Writers at Work Conference in Park City, Utah (now in Salt Lake City), has served as judge for numerous writing competitions, including The National Endowment for the Arts, is listed in Who’s Who In America 2002-6, and was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame, October 2005.

Phyllis Barber will participate in “The Fertile Field of Memories: A Panel on Writing the Memoir” on Saturday, Oct. 28, 12:30 pm, in the Salt Lake City Main Library, 4th Floor Conference Room.