Luc Phinney has worked as a carpenter, contractor, site engineer, landscape architect, architect, teacher, and parks worker. His designs for buildings and landscapes have been completed in Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Wyoming. While living in Montana he designed and built, with his architect-wife, a house made from the boles of firs, steel, and travertine. His first book of poems, Compass, received the 2013 T.S. Eliot Prize.