The Women's Poetry Initiative Series welcomed Queens Poet Laureate Maria Lisella to St. Francis College on November 2, 2015.

Watch Maria Lisella Read Her Work

Native New Yorker, and Queens born and bred, Maria Lisella is the sixth winner in the competition for Queens Poet Laureate 2015-2018 and the first Italian American. She is the author of the collection Thieves in the Family (NYQ Books), and two chapbooks: Amore on Hope Street (Finishing Line Press) and Two Naked Feet (Poets Wear Prada).

Her work has appeared in The New York Quarterly, The Paterson Literary Review, Feile Festa, Voices in Italian Americana, online in First Literary Review-East and New Verse News and will appear in the forthcoming anthology The Traveler's Vade Mecum, published by Red Hen Press.

She co-curates the Italian American Writers Association readings, is a charter member of brevitas, an online poetry circle that Celebrates the Short Poem annually with a published collection and a reading at the Bowery Poetry Club. As an award-winning travel writer and editor, she has visited 60 countries and is currently a New York Expert for USA TODAY.