2750 Malloy Rd Briar Cliff College
Sioux City IA 51103 Sioux City IA 51104
(712) 277-2811 hey@briarcliff.edu (712) 279-5477
Phil Hey has been writing and teaching at Briar Cliff College since 1969, and he is now a professor in the English/Writing Department. He received a B.A. in English at Monmouth College in 1964 and an M.F.A. at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in 1966. He also studied creative writing under Gwendolyn Brooks at the University of Wisconsin. In 1992 he won Briar Cliff's Duff Award for the Pursuit of Excellence.
Published in numerous magazines and anthologies, Phil is the author of five collections of poetry: In Plain Sight, Reorganizing the Stars, Plain Label Poems, A Change of Clothes, and Ballads & Songs. His poem "Route 39 south of Pittsville" won a Rainmaker Award from Zone 3 magazine. He has also received nine commissions for poems, most recently from St. Thomas Church in Sioux City. As an editor, Phil has co-edited the Iowa Poets series with Zachary Pearce of Pterodactyl Press, including Michael Carey’s The Noise the Earth Makes , Ann Struthers’ Stoneboat, and James Hearst’s posthumous A Country Man. He also edits for Celestial Light Press and The Briar Cliff Review, Briar Cliff’s national prize-winning magazine of writing and art. Most recently he assisted Michael Carey in the editing of Voices on the Landscape: Contemporary Iowa Poets (Loess Hills Books).
Phil is a member of the Vistas speakers’ bureau of the Iowa Humanities Board on the topics of farm poetry and natural history, on which he spoke at the 1995 Iowa State Fair. He values the role of the public artist. As a writer on the roster of the Iowa Arts Council's Writers in the Schools program, he has done over forty residencies, most recently at Spirit Lake High School. Meeting with students, he believes, is an essential way to give hope to aspiring young writers and insure a future for live artists and arts. Phil has also been part of a professional poetry reading group, the Quartet Unique, funded in part by grants from the Iowa Arts Council. He has been a participating poet in several Des Moines National Poetry Festivals.
In alternate offerings, Phil has taught poetry seven times and business writing for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival; creative writing ten times in the Elderhostel program; and creative writing in two Morningside College summer workshops. He is a frequent presenter to scholarly and professional organizations, most recently at the Mid-America Popular Culture Conference.
Also a teacher of business writing, Phil has been active in corporate communications for Briar Cliff and regional firms. He wrote successful major grants from Briar Cliff to the Kellogg Foundation and the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, and he assisted in planning and writing Briar Cliff's Title III grants and Sioux City's winning application to be an All-America City. Phil has given workshops and lectures for MCI, the Iams Company, Gateway 2000, Interbake, the City of Sioux City, Phillips Kiln Service, Blue Cross of Western Iowa, and U.S. West Exchange Marketing. He has consulted with the Sioux City Chamber of Commerce, Pech Optical Corp, Risk Systems, Inc., General Business Equipment, and Paul Smith’s College.
Phil lives on a homestead of 38 hilly acres with prairie grass, transient deer, and weather imported from the Dakotas.