Professor of English and celebrated author Helen Phillips saw her latest novel, Hum, hit the bookshelves on August 6, and it is already earning positive reviews, as TIME named it one of “25 New Books You Need to Read This Summer.” “Hum” is Helen Phillips’ sixth novel. Phillips’ sixth novel is described by publisher Simon & Schuster as a “tense dystopian thriller that captures an urgent and unflinching portrayal of a woman’s fight for her family’s security in a world shaped by global warming and rapid technological progress,” and Vogue called it a “striking new work of dystopian fiction…textured, intimate, and taut with dread.” The New York Times wrote: “This sleek ride of a novel further cements Phillips’s position as one of our most profound writers of speculative fiction.” Phillips’ novel The Need was long listed for the National Book Award and was a New York Times Notable Book of 2019, and her story collection Some Possible Solutions received the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat was also a New York Times Notable Book (2015) and a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award. Hum book tour events can be found here. Philips is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, The Iowa Review Nonfiction Award, and the Italo Calvino Prize. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic and The New York Times, and on “Selected Shorts.”
