Mary Cappello is a writer and professor of English and Creative Writing at the

University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of Rhode Island. The univer ...

.University of Rhode Island, Faculty Bios
Mary Cappello
She is the author of five books of literary nonfiction, and her essays and experimental prose have been published in ''

The Georgia Review ''The Georgia Review'' is a literary journal based in Athens, Georgia. Founded at University of Georgia in 1947, the journal features poetry, fiction, essays, book reviews, and visual art. The journal has won National Magazine Awards for Ficti ...

'',Mary Cappello
"Getting the News"
''The Georgia Review'', volume 63, number 2, Summer 2009, 294–315. ''

Salmagundi Salmagundi (alternatively salmagundy or sallid magundi) is a cold dish or salad made from different ingredients which may include meat, seafood, Egg as food, eggs, cooked and raw vegetables, fruits, or Pickling, pickles. In English culture, the ...

''Mary Cappello
"For 'Anyone Interested in Learning What Makes Us Human'
''Salmagundi'', Spring-Summer 2008, 75–96. and ''

Cabinet Magazine ''Cabinet Magazine'' is a quarterly, Brooklyn, New York–based, non-profit art and culture magazine established in 2000. ''Cabinet Magazine'' also operates an event and exhibition space in Brooklyn. In 2022, ''Cabinet'' transitioned its magazi ...

''.Mary Cappello, "Ingestion/Alone on Floor with a Pile of Buttons," ''Cabinet Magazine: A Quarterly of Art and Culture,'' Special Issue: Forensics, 43 (October 2011): 12–15. Her work has been featured in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'',Amanda Schaffer
Down the Hatch and Straight Into Medical History
The New York Times, January 10, 2011. ''

Salon Salon may refer to: Common meanings * Beauty salon A beauty salon or beauty parlor is an establishment that provides Cosmetics, cosmetic treatments for people. Other variations of this type of business include hair salons, spas, day spas, ...

'',Thomas Rogers
“Swallow”: The strange things people swallow
Salon, December 18, 2010. ''

The Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (''The Huffington Post'' until 2017, itself often abbreviated as ''HPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and covers p ...

'',13 Real And Imaginary Things That People Have Swallowed
The Huffington Post, January 22, 2011. in guest author blogs for

Powell's Books Powell's Books is a chain of bookstores, based in Portland, Oregon, Portland, Oregon. Their flagship store, dubbed Powell's City of Books, claims to be the largest independent bookstore, independent new and used bookstore in the world. In addit ...

,Powell's Books Blog
Mary Cappello
and on six separate occasions as Notable Essay of the Year in

Best American Essays ''The Best American Essays'' is a yearly anthology of magazine articles published in the United States.Robert Atwan (ed.), Adam Gopnick (guest ed.). ''The Best American Essays 2008'', Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008. It was started in 1986 and is ...

.John Jeremiah Sullivan and Robert Atwan, eds
The Best American Essays 2014
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Oct 7, 2014.Edwidge Danticat and Robert Atwan, eds
Best American Essays 2011
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Oct 4, 2011.Mary Oliver, ed
The Best American Essays 2009
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Oct 8, 2009. A 2011 Guggenheim Fellow in Creative Arts/Nonfiction,John Simon Guggenheim Fellows
Mary Cappello
she recently received a 2015

Berlin Prize The Berlin Prize is a residential fellowship at the Hans Arnhold Center, awarded by the American Academy in Berlin to scholars and artists. Each year, about 20 fellows are selected. The stated mission of the program is to improve the transatlan ...

from The

American Academy in Berlin The American Academy in Berlin is a private, independent, nonpartisan research and cultural institution in Berlin dedicated to sustaining and enhancing the long-term intellectual, cultural, and political ties between the United States and German ...

, a fellowship awarded to scholars, writers, composers, and artists who represent the highest standards of excellence in their fields.The

American Academy Announces Berlin Prize Recipients
, 2015.

Education

Cappello is originally from

Darby, Pennsylvania Darby is a borough (Pennsylvania), borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. The borough is located along Darby Creek southwest of Center City, Philadelphia, Center City Philadelphia. The borough of Darby is distinct from the ne ...

, a suburb outside

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from State University of New York, Buffalo, and her B.A. from

Dickinson College Dickinson College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1773 as Carlisle Grammar School, Dickinson was chartered on September 9, 1783, ...

. Cappello has taught at the

, as a

Fulbright The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...

Lecturer at the

Gorky Literary Institute The Maxim Gorky Literature Institute () is an institution of higher education in Moscow, Russia. It is located at 25 Tverskoy Boulevard in central Moscow. History The institute was founded in 1933 on the initiative of Maxim Gorky, a writer, foun ...

in Moscow, Russia,University at Buffalo Alumni Association
Mary Cappello, PhD ’88 & MA ’85, Award-winning professor
and at the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River in 1930. With approximately 30,000 full ...

Publications and works

Literary nonfiction: Books

* ''Life Breaks In: A Mood Almanack'', University of Chicago Press, October 2016. * * * *

Essays and experimental prose print

*"Mood Rooms," chosen as the annual

Meridel Le Sueur Meridel Le Sueur (February 22, 1900, Murray, Iowa – November 14, 1996, Hudson, Wisconsin) was an American writer associated with the proletarian literature movement of the 1930s and 1940s. Born as Meridel Wharton, she assumed the name of her mo ...

Essay, Water~Stone Review, Fall 2015.Water~Stone Review
Fall 2015. *"Wending Artifice: Creative Nonfiction and our Century’s Turn," in *"Contact," in * "My Secret, Private Errand (An Essay on Love and Theft),"

, Fall 2013-Winter 2014, nos. 180–181: 135–183. *"objective correlatives: a trialogue on love," Hotel Amerika, volume 8, no. 2, Spring 2010, 7–15. *"Losing Consciousness to a Lost Art," Michigan Quarterly Review, Spring 2007, 329–338.
"The Trees are Aflame"
from ''My Commie Sweetheart: Scenes from a Queer Friendship,'' 2004.

Essays and experimental prose on-line

* "Courting the Peculiar: The Ever-changing Queerness of Creative Nonfiction" a series of essays, sound texts and performances on creative nonfiction as a queer genre
Slag Glass City
December 2014.
"Flow,"
a lyric essay for Bending Genre: Toward a Theory of Creative Nonfiction, April 2013.
"Voluptuously, Expansively, Historically, Contradictorily: Essaying the Interview"
with David Lazar for ''The Conversant: Interview Projects, Talk Poetries, Embodied Inquiry,'' November 2013.
"Lyric Essay as Perversion: Channeling Djuna Barnes,"

TriQuarterly ''TriQuarterly'' is a name shared by an American literary magazine and a series of books. The journal is published twice a year under the aegis of the Northwestern University Department of English and features fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama ...

, September 2014.
"Disconcerting Pleasures; or, The Mysterious Unknowability of the Mind: A Conversation with Mary Cappello and Christine Montross"
for Bellevue Literary Press Conversation Series between doctors and artists, May 23, 2014.

Awards and recognition

, Individual Fellowship, 2015.American Academy Announces Berlin Prize Recipients
*The

Foundation Scholarly Excellence Award, 2015.URI Foundation Excellence Awards
, 2015. Nominated in 2014, 2013. *

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon individuals who have demonstrated dis ...

in Creative Arts/Nonfiction. * GAMMA Award for Best Feature from The Magazine Association of the Southeast for "Getting the News: A Signer among Signs," ''The Georgia Review'', volume 63, number 2, Summer 2009.The Georgia Review earns 10 honors at GAMMA Awards ceremony
UGA Today, May 4, 2010. * Teacher of the Year Award, University of Rochester.University of Rhode Island
Meet Mary Cappello
*The Bechtel Prize for Educating the Imagination from the Teachers and Writers Collaborative, NYC for the essay, "Can Creative Writing Be Taught?"Bechtel Prize Essay
"Can Creative Writing Be Taught?"
, Mary Cappello, 2004. * The Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize, with photographer Paola Ferrario, Center for Documentary Studies,

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

, for "Pane Amaro/Bitter Bread: The Struggle of New Immigrants to Italy," 2001.Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize Winners
Mary Cappello and Paola Ferrario
, 2001. * Fulbright Fellowship,

Maxim Gorky Literature Institute The Maxim Gorky Literature Institute () is an institution of higher education in Moscow, Russia. It is located at 25 Tverskoy Boulevard in central Moscow. History The institute was founded in 1933 on the initiative of Maxim Gorky, a writer, foun ...

, Moscow, Russia, 2001.

Faculty
Mary Cappello

References

External links and interviews

Interview
with Mutter Museum Director Robert Hicks for ''No Bones About It'' on the

Chevalier Jackson Chevalier Quixote Jackson (November 4, 1865 – August 16, 1958) was an American pioneer in laryngology. He is sometimes known as the "father of endoscopy", although Philipp Bozzini (1773–1809) is also often given this sobriquet. Chevalier Q. J ...

Foreign Body Collection
Interview
with

LA Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper in the U.S. and the large ...

Carolyn Kellogg, on the most important book Cappello read in school
Interview
with Julie Bolcer for Here! TV, on writing breast cancer and its politics, posted by Antonio Gonzalez Cerna from

Lambda Literary The Lambda Literary Foundation (also known as Lambda Literary) is an American LGBTQ literary organization whose mission is to nurture and advocate for LGBTQ writers, elevating the impact of their words to create community, preserve their legaci ...

Interview
with Sarah Kruse, on writing the strange and non-narrative assemblage
The Curious Collection of Swallowed Objects
Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane, March 23, 2011.
Awkward: A Detour
with Celeste Quinn for Illinois Public Radio's Afternoon Magazine, February 27, 2008. * An illustrated reading
"The Chevalier Jackson Foreign Body Collection and the Art It Has Inspired,"
at St Bartholomew's Hospital Pathology Museum and Gallery, London, England, June 2012. {{DEFAULTSORT:Cappello, Mary Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Dickinson College alumni University of Rhode Island faculty People from Darby, Pennsylvania University at Buffalo alumni