Maria Mazziotti Gillan is an American poet.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan was born March 12, 1940, in an Italian enclave in Paterson, New Jersey's Riverside neighborhood.^[1]

She attended Paterson public schools and is a graduate of Eastside High School.

She graduated from Seton Hall University and from New York University with an MA In literature. She enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Drew University from 1977 to 1980.^[2] She married Dennis Gillan; they have two children, John and Jennifer, and two grandchildren, Caroline and Jackson.^[3]

She is the founder and executive director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey,^[4] and editor of the Paterson Literary Review,^[5] and is the director of the creative writing program and professor of poetry at Binghamton University-SUNY.^[6] Gillan founded Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in 1980, after receiving a grant from the State Council on the Arts, and featured speakers including Allan Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, and Stanley Kunitz.^[7]

She has published 22 books. One of her most recent is The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets (Redux Consortium, 2014), a collection of her poetry and watercolor artwork. Her craft book, Writing Poetry to Save Your Life: How to Find the Courage to Tell Your Stories (MiroLand, Guernica) was published in 2013.^[8]

She is co-editor with her daughter Jennifer of four anthologies: Unsettling America, Identity Lessons, and Growing Up Ethnic in America (Penguin/Putnam) and Italian-American Writers on New Jersey (Rutgers).^[6]

Since 2012 she has been in the Honour Committee of Immagine & Poesia, the artistic literary movement founded in Turin, Italy, with the patronage of Aeronwy Thomas (Dylan Thomas's daughter).

She lives in Hawthorne, New Jersey,^[9] and is a professor emeritus at SUNY-Binghamton.^[10]

• 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers
• 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us
• 2008 [Chancellor’s Award for Scholarship and Creative Endeavor] from Binghamton University
• 2008 [Sheila Motton Award]
• 2014 AWP George Garrett Award

• The Weather of Old Seasons, Cross-Cultural Communications, 1989, ISBN 978-0-89304-435-0
• Where I Come From, 1995, Guernica Editions, ISBN 978-1-55071-005-2
• Things My Mother Told Me, Guernica Editions, 1999, ISBN 978-1-55071-021-2
• Italian Women in Black Dresses, Guernica, 2002, ISBN 1-55071-156-3
• Maria Mazziotti Gillan: Greatest Hits 1975-2002, Pudding House Publications, April 2003, ISBN 1-58998-177-4
• Talismans/Talismani, Ibiskos Editions, 2006, ISBN 88-7841-242-2
• All That Lies Between Us, Guernica Editions, 2007, ISBN 978-1-55071-261-2
• What We Pass On: Collected Poems 1980-2009, Guernica Editions, 2010, ISBN 978-1550713046
• The Place I Call Home, NYQ Books, 2012, ISBN 978-1935520894
• Ancestors' Song, Bordighera Press, 2013, ISBN 978-1599540634
• The Silence in an Empty House, NYQ Books, 2013, ISBN 978-1935520894
• The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, Redux Consortium, 2014, ISBN 978-0991152322
• Paterson Light and Shadow, Serving House Books, 2017, ISBN 978-0997779752

• Mary Ann Vigilante Mannino; Justin Vitiello, eds. (2003). "Shame and Silence in My Work". Breaking open: reflections on Italian American women's writing. Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1-55753-243-5.
• Melissa Tuckey, ed. (2018). Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0820353159.
• Garrison Keillor, ed. (2006). "After School on Ordinary Days". Good Poems for Hard Times. Penguin Group. ISBN 978-0-14-303767-5.
• Liz Rosenberg, ed. (2000). "Oak Place Musings". Light-Gathering Poems. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-8050-6223-6.

• Italian American Writers on New Jersey, editors Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Jennifer Gillan, Edvige Giunta, Rutgers University Press, November 2003
• Identity Lessons, editors Maria M. Gillan, Jennifer Gillan, Penguin Putnam, 1999 ISBN 978-0-14-027167-6
• Growing Up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Fiction About Learning to Be American, editors Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Jennifer Gillan, San Val, Incorporated, 1999 ISBN 978-0-613-21652-4
• Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry, editors Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Jennifer Gillan, Paw Prints, 2008 ISBN 978-1-4395-0933-3

• "Maria Mazziotti Gillan Official Site"
• "Maria Mazziotti Gillan Official Blog"
• "Maria Mazziotti Gillan Books"
• "Maria Mazziotti Gillan: Poet & Editor Italian American Writers of New Jersey", Italian American Writers
• Sean Thomas Dougherty, ed. (2006). Maria Mazziotti Gillan: essays on her works. Guernica. ISBN 978-1-55071-250-6.
• Papers of Maria Mazziotti Gillan, MSS 89, Monsignor William Noe Field Archives at Seton Hall University.