John Murillo

John Murillo, director of creative writing and assistant professor of English and African American studies, is the recipient of the 2021 Four Quartets Prize for his poem “A Refusal to Mourn the Deaths, by Gunfire, of Three Men in Brooklyn” from his poetry collection Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way Books, 2020). The prize, awarded by the T.S. Eliot Foundation and the Poetry Society of America, will bestow Murillo with $21,000. It was launched in 2018 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets being published in a single volume of work and is given to a “unified and…

On April 7, poet John Murillo, assistant professor of English, was named the 2021 winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award for his recent collection Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way Books, 2020). Murillo’s collection offers "a reflective look at the legacy of institutional, accepted violence against Blacks and Latinos and the personal and societal wreckage wrought by long histories of subjugation." The Kingsley Tufts Award is awarded to a mid-career poet and comes with a $100,000 prize. Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry also was nominated for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award and the 2021 NAACP Images Awards in the Outstanding Literary Work…

Three titles affiliated with Wesleyan were nominated for the 2021 NAACP Images Awards in the Outstanding Literary Work — Poetry category. According to the NAACP, Image Awards celebrate "the outstanding achievements and performances of people of color in the arts and those who promote social justice through their creative work." Among the five nominees is Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way Books, 2020) written by John Murillo, assistant professor of English; The Age of Phillis (Wesleyan University Press, 2020) by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers; and Un-American (Wesleyan University Press, 2020) by Hafizah Geter. The collections by Murillo, Jeffers, and Geter also are longlisted for…

A poetry collection authored by John Murillo, assistant professor of English, is longlisted for both the 2021 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and the Believer Book Awards. Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way Books, 2020) explores the legacy of institutional, accepted violence against Blacks and Latinos and the personal and societal wreckage wrought by long histories of subjugation. The collection includes a sonnet triggered by the shooting deaths of three Brooklyn men that becomes an extended reflection on the history of racial injustice. The PEN/Voelcker Award, which comes with a $5,000 prize, is awarded to a poet whose distinguished collection of…

New poetry by John Murillo, assistant professor of English, is published in the Feb. 2019 issue (Volume 48, No. 1) of American Poetry Review. Murillo also is featured on the publication's cover page. His poem, titled "A Refusal to Mourn the Deaths, by Gunfire, of Three Men in Brooklyn,” is a nod to Dylan Thomas’s famous poem, “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London.” (more…)

Murillo Awarded Four Quartets Prize For Poetry

Murillo Honored with $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry

3 Works of Poetry Nominated for NAACP Images Awards

Murillo’s Poetry Longlisted for PEN/Voelcker, Believer Book Awards

Murillo’s Poem Featured in American Poetry Review