Mary Gilliland

Mary Gilliland is the author of two award-winning poetry collections: The Ruined Walled Castle Garden (2020) and The Devil’s Fools (2022). Recent poems and commentary also appear in The Fiddlehead, Stand, TAB, Vallum, and Woven Tale Press. Her poems are widely published in print and online literary journals and most recently anthologized in Rumors, Secrets, & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion, & Choice; Wild Gods: The Ecstatic in Contemporary Poetry and Prose; and Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms In Our Hands. Gilliland was the featured poet at the Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival in 2009 and was cited in the BBC Wildlife Magazine (2002) Poet of the Year awards. Other honors include a Stanley Kunitz Fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts and a Cornell Council on the Arts faculty grant. She is also a founding member of Light On The Hill retreat center in upstate New York.

Alice Fulton has called Gilliland “by turns mystical and realist” with a vision “profound and enduring,” and describes the work in her newest book as “sinewy” and “nuanced”—“poems that understand earth—and consciousness—as gardens that no walls or enchantments can protect.”

Workshop and presentation topics that Mary has created include ‘Litanies and Labyrinths’; ‘Michael Field: Poetic Collaboration between a Victorian Aunt and Niece’; ‘Walking Out of Oneself: Poetry and Labyrinths’; ‘Writing from the Heart.’