Richard Cecil

Richard Cecil was born on March 14, 1944, in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated with a BA from the University of Maryland, an MA from the University of Iowa, and MFA from Indiana University.

Cecil was visiting professor at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania from 1986 to 1987, and from 1987 to 1989 was first visiting assistant professor and then visiting professor at Indiana University. He was then appointed assistant professor at Rhodes College from 1988 to 1989. As of 2008 he was teaching at Indiana University Bloomington as a teacher of creative writing in the English Department, and in the university's Hutton Honors College, as well as in the Spalding University brief-residency MFA Program in Louisville, Kentucky.

Cecil's first collection of poetry, Einstein's Brain was published in 1986. This was followed by Alcatraz (1992), which was the recipient of the 1991 Verna Emery Poetry Award, and In Search of the Great Dead in 1999. In 2004, Twenty First Century Blues was published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2004. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, New England Review, The Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Southern Review, River Styx, Virginia Quarterly Review.

Cecil married poet and author Maura Stanton in 1971.

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• 1998: 2nd place, Crab Orchard Award • 1991: Verna Emery Poetry Award, for Alcatraz