At the Hour of Now

MARIA LISELLA is the sixth Queens Poet Laureate; and the recipient of a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets in 2020. During her fellowship she led poetry workshops for underserved communities throughout the Queens Public Library system, the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Heights and Hills in Brooklyn, the Isamu Noguchi Museum, SAGE through Teachers and Writers Collaborative, York College, and the Writers Guild Initiative.Her collections include Thieves in the Family (NYQ Books); and two chapbooks, Amore on Hope Street (Finishing Line Press), and Two Naked Feet (Poets Wear Prada). Twice nominated for the Pushcart Poetry Prize, her work has appeared in: Big City Lit, Chronogram, First Literary Review-East, Lily Poetry Review, LIPS, Maintenant, Mom Egg Review, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, NY Quarterly, New York Writers Institute's Trolley, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, Shabdaguchha, Skidrow Penthouse, The Ekphrastic Review, The New York Times, and Verse Virtual. Her essays, poetry, and short stories have been anthologized in A Feast of Narrative (Vol. 1); Avanti Popolo, Brownstone Poets; Common Unity; ECHOES of Growing Up Italian; From Somewhere to Nowhere - The End of the American Dream; Long Island Sounds; #Me Too, Anch' io; NYC through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here; Poets of Queens; Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice; Sweet Lemons 2: International Writings with a Sicilian Accent; The Traveler's Vade Mecum; and What Does It Mean to Be White in America? She co-curates the Italian American Writers Association readings in New York, and is a contributor to La Voce di New York, Never Stop Traveling and other travel publications.Featured on The Poet and the Poem at the Library of Congress, Cultural Daily and the Local-Express Queens Gazette, she won first prize in the Venera Fazio Poetry Contest sponsored by the Association of Italian Canadian Writers, and third prize in the Amilcare Solferini International Literary Competition. Her work has been translated into Albanian, French, Italian, and Korean.