Lucia Perillo
Encyclopedia
Life
Lucia Perillo grew up in the suburbs of New York City in the 1960s. She graduated from McGill UniversityMcGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
in Montreal in 1979 with a major in wildlife management, and subsequently worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She completed her M.A. in English at Syracuse University
Syracuse University
Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
, while working seasonally at Mount Rainer National Park, and moved to Olympia, Washington
Olympia, Washington
Olympia is the capital city of the U.S. state of Washington and the county seat of Thurston County. It was incorporated on January 28, 1859. The population was 46,478 at the 2010 census...
in 1987, where she taught at Saint Martin's College. For most of the 1990s, Perillo taught in the creative writing program at Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University is a state university system based in Carbondale, Illinois, in the Southern Illinois region of the state, with multiple campuses...
.
She suffers from Multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms...
.
She now lives with her husband, James Rudy, in Olympia, Washington
Olympia, Washington
Olympia is the capital city of the U.S. state of Washington and the county seat of Thurston County. It was incorporated on January 28, 1859. The population was 46,478 at the 2010 census...
.
Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Kenyon Review.
Her poetry collection Inseminating the Elephant was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
Awards
- 2000 MacArthur Fellow awards—bestowed by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
- 1997 Kate Tufts Discovery Award
- PEN/Revson Foundation grant
- Purdue University's Emery Poetry Prize