Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jayne Anne Phillips has published her first memoir, Small Town Girls, detailing her upbringing in small-town West Virginia and her literary journey. The book, released by Alfred A. Knopf, explores decades from the 1950s onward through essays that resonate thematically with broader American experiences. Phillips describes it as a work capturing personal and public tragedies alongside human resilience.
Jayne Anne Phillips, known for her war novels including the Pulitzer-winning Night Watch, has ventured into nonfiction with Small Town Girls. The memoir recounts her childhood in Buckhannon, West Virginia, family life, and influences like the Hatfield-McCoy feud and local history tied to the French and Indian War and Civil War. 'I’ve never written a book as myself, in a first-person voice—a nonfiction book, a memoir not only of childhood and family, but of those American decades in which I first became myself,' Phillips said in an interview with Jane Ciabattari for Literary Hub, published April 21, 2026. She credits her agent Lynn Nesbit for shaping the manuscript into its final thematic structure, which arcs from generational predestination to transformation. The essays also reflect on her writing career, from early stories in Black Tickets—published when she was 26—to connections with writers like Breece D’J Pancake. Phillips discusses caring for her mother in her final days while pregnant with her first child, emphasizing enduring family bonds. Looking ahead, Phillips is adapting her novel Quiet Dell into a limited TV series screenplay and plans more nonfiction. The book highlights resilience amid gun violence references and societal divisions, positioning literature as a defense: 'Language, literature, examined memory, connection, are the only defense.'