Let’s remember when Lucia Perillo became a MacArthur Genius, on this day in 2000 (June 14)
When the acclaimed poet and Olympia resident Lucia Perillo passed away in 2016, the Washington Post called her “an award-winning poet who wielded a fine-edged wit, unflinchingly dissecting mortality in verses that drew upon her suffering from multiple sclerosis.”
Nineteen years ago today, she found out she was a MacArthur Genius. HistoryLink says:
On June 14, 2000, poet and teacher Lucilla Perillo (1958–2016) receives a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation fellowship, also known as a “genius grant,” one of the nation’s most prestigious awards. Perillo is an associate professor of creative writing at Southern Illinois University, and each weekend flies home to Olympia, Thurston County, to join her husband James Rudy. She is one of 25 people in 2000 to receive MacArthur fellowships, which since 1981 have been awarded annually.
They go on, and because I love a good “notification of prestigious award” story…
In 2000, Perillo had just made an extremely difficult decision. Twelve years after the diagnosis, she was finding it harder to teach creative writing at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale during the week and then fly home on the weekends to be with her husband in Olympia, as she had been doing since 1991. She decided to quit her Midwest teaching post and return to writing full-time from the comfort of her home. That June, as she was scrubbing her bathroom in preparation for vacating her house in Carbondale, the phone rang. It was the MacArthur Foundation.
“The conversation was brief and mysterious. Then, while Ms. Perillo waited for her husband, James Rudy, the thought occurred to her: maybe she would give the money away. She and her husband needed money, but they had friends who needed it more.
“‘I had heard of the MacArthur fellowship … But I think I’m stupid, so I don’t think of myself as MacArthur material … I have that — what do you call it — that imposter syndrome. I always feel that my life is something that I’ve stumbled into and am undeserving of.’”
Perillo’s fateful phone call came the week before the MacArthur fellowships for 2000 were actually awarded (adding to the drama of the surprise phone calls to recipients, “the foundation swore them to secrecy” until the public announcement). The formal award of the 25 fellowships was made on Wednesday, June 14, 2000.
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