Julia Lisella

Julia Lisella was born in Queens, New York, to second-generation Italian American parents, a heritage that often weaves its way through her work. She attended public schools, and then Barnard College for her BA in English and NYU for an MA in Creative Writing. She received her PhD in American literature at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, including: Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest, Letters to the World, Learning By Heart, Unsettling America, For a Living and Ava Gardner: Touches of Venus. Journal publications include: Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, Valparaiso, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, Ocean State Review, and on line at Antiphon, Literary Mama, Pebble Lake Review and elsewhere. She has received residencies from the Millay, Dorset and MacDowell Colonies for the arts and has held several grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to teach poetry in her community. She is Professor of English at Regis College in Weston, MA where she teaches courses in literature and writing. She is also a scholar of women's writing and has published essays on Genevieve Taggard, Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni, Gwendolyn Brooks, Maxine Hong Kingston, Muriel Rukeyser and Margaret Walker. She co-curates the Italian American Literary Reading Series in Boston.