Chicago Literary Hall of Fame Presents Ana Castillo with our Fuller Award for lifetime achievement

Acclaimed author Ana Castillo was awarded the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s Fuller Award for her lifetime achievement as an author, activist, educator, and scholar. The ceremony was live at the American Writers Museum on Thursday, March 24, at seven p.m. It was also live streamed. The event was free and open to the public with registration.

Castillo joined an illustrious list of 11 other Chicago writers to receive the award. Poet Mark Turcotte will emcee the ceremony; author Sandra Jackson-Okopu, scholar Jane Hseu and artist global advocate Arica Hilton will give short speeches; actor/director Henry Godinez and Liza Ann Acosta will perform readings; and author/publisher Christine Rice will lead a conversation with Ana. In addition to the American Writers Museum, several partners will present the award alongside the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, including the Guild Literary Complex, DePaul University, Dominican University, Hypertext Magazine, the University of Chicago Department of English, National Museum of Mexican Art, and Hilton/Asmus Contemporary.

Castillo (June 15, 1953-) is a celebrated and distinguished poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator and independent scholar. Castillo was born and raised in Chicago. She has contributed to periodicals and on-line venues (Salon and Oxygen) and national magazines, including More and the Sunday New York Times. Castillo’s writings have been the subject of numerous scholarly investigations and publications.

Among her award winning, best sellling titles: novels include So Far From God, The Guardians and Peel My Love like an Onion; poetry collections include My Book of the Dead, I Ask the Impossible, My Father Was a Toltec, Women Are Not Roses, and The Invitation. Her novel, Sapogonia was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She has been profiled and interviewed on National Public Radio and the History Channel and was a radio-essayist with NPR in Chicago. Ana Castillo is editor of La Tolteca 2.0 on her blog, an arts and literary zine, which features creatives of all backgrounds, while focusing on the marginalized.

In 2020 Castillo was the recipient of the Northeastern Illinois University Distinguished Alumnus Award, the highest alumni honor the University bestows. In 2014 Dr. Castillo held the Lund-Gil Endowed Chair at Dominican University, River Forest, IL and served on the faculty with Bread Loaf Summer Program (Middlebury College) in 2015 and 2016. She also held the first Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University 2001-06, The Martin Luther King, Jr Distinguished Visiting Scholar post at M.I.T. and was the Poet-in-Residence at Westminster College in Utah in 2012, among other teaching posts throughout her extensive career. Castillo holds an M.A from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D., University of Bremen, Germany in American Studies and an honorary doctorate from Colby College. She received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for her first novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters.

Among her other awards she is the recipient of a Carl Sandburg Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in fiction and poetry.