Poet and former MacArthur fellow Lucia Perillo was born in 1958 and grew up in the suburbs of New York City. After earning a degree in wildlife management from McGill University in Montreal, she worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Perillo earned a master's degree in English from Syracuse University while working seasonally at Mount Rainier National Park, and taught at Syracuse, Saint Martin's University in Lacey, Washington, and Southern Illinois University. Wilderness, nature-- and illness-- were frequent themes in her writings-- in 1988, while in her 30s, Perillo was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Perillo passed away in Olympia, Washinngton on October 16, 2016. Perillo's poetry has been described as vibrant, lyric and full of interesting paradoxes: elegant adjectives paired with visceral images, and violence tempered by the possibilities of human compassion and language. Perillo has published numerous books of poetry, the memoir "I've Heard the Vultures Singing : Field Notes on Poetry, Illness, and Nature," and a book of short stories. Her last work, "Time Will Clean the Carcass Bones : Selected and New Poems," was published on Fenruary 9, 2016 by Copper Canyon Press. Her writing garnered multiple honors including a Pushcart Prize, the Kate Tufts Award, the Kingsley Tufts Award, the Norma Farber Award, a Washington Book Award and the Bobbitt National Prize for poetry.

A collection of short stories that takes place in the Pacific Northwest includes odd characters like an addict who becomes obsessed with vacuum cleaners and a suburban housewife who commits armed robberies.

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