In 1994, Phillips published her second novel, "Shelter," a portrait of the loss of innocence at a West Virginia girls' camp in the summer of 1963. Called “a rich, vivid novel of moral and psychological complexity destined to stand alongside works by Faulkner and other Southern masters” (Vanity Fair) and “a defiant, frighteningly beautiful novel as disturbing as its setting, Shelter feels like Phillips’ bid for immortality” (Harpers Bazaar), Shelter was awarded an Academy Award in Literature by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.