Lucia Maria Perillo (September 30, 1958 – October 16, 2016) was an American poet. In 2000, Perillo was recognized with a "genius grant" as part of the MacArthur Fellows Program.

Life and career

Perillo was born in Manhattan on September 30, 1958 and grew up in Irvington. Her work appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The Kenyon Review, among other magazines. A traditional poet of mostly free-verse personal reflection, she wrote extensively about living with multiple sclerosis in her poems and essays. Time Will Clean the Carcass Bones was her last book of poetry (Copper Canyon Press, 2016). Her 2012 collection of short fiction, Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain, was shortlisted for the 2013 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. She died on October 16, 2016, in Olympia, Washington, aged 58.

Awards

Poetry

Non-fiction

Fiction