Lucia Perillo is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Dangerous Life (1989), which won the Norma Farber Award from the Poetry Society of America; The Body Mutinies (1996), winner of the Kate Tufts prize from Claremont University; The Oldest Map with the Name America (1999); Luck is Luck (2005), which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and won the Kingsley Tufts prize from Claremont University; Inseminating the Elephant (2009), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress; and Spectrum of Possible Deaths (2012). She has published a book of essays, I’ve Heard the Vultures Singing (2005), and a book of short stories, Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain (2012). She has taught at  Syracuse University, Southern Illinois University, and in the Warren Wilson MFA program. A former MacArthur fellow, Perillo lives in Olympia, Washington.