Born and raised in Jamaica Queens, New York, Phyliss spent a good portion of her life in Long Island. She attended the University of Michigan, where she got her Master’s in Library Science, she then went on to NYU and got a Master’s in Cinema Studies. She got married and had one daughter who currently lives in Canada. She has fond memories of volunteering in soup kitchens as she got to watch her daughter sew buttons on various clothing items of the needing. Phyliss also spent time volunteering for Amnesty International writing letters to assist in liberating prisoners of war. She enjoys writing and reading and was awarded a grant to travel to London, Belgium, and Paris where she did research on film archives. This travelling stirred a love of Paris for her and she would love to live there. She wrote many articles, one of which was translated to French that focused on the housing situation during the second World War.