LAS News

Tony Trigilio Wins Illinois Arts Council Fellowship

The Illinois Arts Council has named English Department faculty member Tony Trigilio a 2009 Artists Fellowship Award recipient in Poetry. In winning this award, Dr. Trigilio joins a select group of Illinois artists to be honored “in recognition of their outstanding work and commitment within the arts.” This prestigious biennial award, granted to only seven poets in the state, includes a prize of $7,000.

Dr. Trigilio is the Director of Creative Writing - Poetry and is the Associate Chairperson of the English Department. His most recent publications include the poetry collection, The Lama's English Lessons (Three Candles Press, 2006); the chapbooks, With the Memory, Which is Enormous (Main Street Rag Press; forthcoming, 2009) and Make a Joke and I Will Sigh and You Will Laugh and I Will Cry (e-chap, Scantily Clad Press, 2008); and two books of criticism, Allen Ginsberg's Buddhist Poetics (Southern Illinois University Press, 2007) and "Strange Prophecies Anew": Rereading Apocalypse in Blake, H.D., and Ginsberg (Fairleigh, Dickinson University Press, 2000). He also is co-editor, with Tim Prchal, of the anthology Visions and Divisions: American Immigration Literature, 1870-1930 (Rutgers University Press, 2008). Trigilio’s poems have been anthologized in The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab, 2006); Digerati: 20 Contemporary Poets in the Virtual World (Three Candles, 2006); America Zen (Bottom Dog Press, 2004), and A Gathering of Poets, a volume commemorating the students killed at Kent State University and Jackson State University (Kent State University Press). Tony also co-edits, with Lisa Fishman, Arielle Greenberg and David Trinidad, the poetry journal Court Green.

The Artists Fellowship Program offers funding for twelve artistic disciplines on a two-year rotating cycle. This year's Fellowship and Finalist Award recipients were selected from 921 creative artists working in the disciplines of Interdisciplinary/Computer Art, Music Composition, Photography, Poetry, and Visual Arts.