Maria Lisella

Born in South Jamaica, Queens, Maria Lisella is poet and travel writer. She is a graduate of Queensborough Community College and Queens College, holds a master’s degree from the NYU–Polytechnic Institute, and attended Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Lisella is the author of two full-length poetry collections, At the Hour of Now (Bordighera Press, 2026) and Thieves in the Family (NYQ Books, 2014), and two chapbooks: Amore on Hope
Street (Finishing Line Press, 2009) and Two Naked Feet (Poets Wear Prada, 2009). In 2018, when her poet husband Gil Fagiani died, Lisella shepherded two of his books posthumously: Soundtrack of a Life, a bilingual selection of Fagiani’s work (Legas, 2023) published in both Sicily and in New York, and Missing Madonnas (Bordighera Press, 2018).

Lisella’s work has been anthologized in the bilingual anthology Di là mare/Across the Sea: Contemporary Italian and Italian-American Poetry (Bordighera Press, 2026); Stronger than Fear:
Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (Cave Moon Press, 2022); and NYC through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here (Blue Light Press, 2022), among others volumes. Her poetry has been translated into Albanian, Italian, and Korean.

Lisella curates the Italian American Writers Association’s literary series and is poetry editor for the literary and scholarly review Voices in Italian Americana (VIA). She has led poetry workshops for underserved communities for various institutions, including the Queens Public Library system, the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Heights & Hills, and The Noguchi Museum. Lisella served as poet laureate of Queens, New York, from 2015 to 2019. She has lived in Astoria, Queens, for forty years. 

Read about Maria Lisella’s 2020 Poets Laureate Fellowship project.