Welcome to my web page! I’m a poet, teacher, and scholar of women’s writing.
My poetry books include: Our Lively Kingdom (Bordighera Press 2022), finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, 2023, and Grand Prize Finalist and Honorable Mention in the Eric Hoffer Book Award, Always and Terrain, both from WordTech Editions, and a chapbook, Love Song Hiroshima. My poems, book reviews, and essays appear in numerous anthologies and literary journals, both online and in print. Peruse the site to learn more about my work, how to order my newest poetry collection, and how to find some of my work on line.
Photo credit: Mary Ann McQuillan
“The poems in Julia Lisella’s Our Lively Kingdom are dazzling in their nuanced depictions of life and the complexities surrounding one’s most intimate relationships. This is an essential collection, not only in its articulation of the fallout of loss and trauma in these ever-challenging times, but also in its willingness and grace to face that which is most volatile and difficult to embrace.”
— Olivia Kate Cerrone, MER Journal
“[T]hrough it all, these poems of wit and wisdom, memory and intention, love and loss, ‘come shunting through with a tiny roar.’ We’ll be hearing its echo for years to come.”
—Chad Frame, Ovunque Siamo
Full Bio
Julia Lisella is the author of three full-length collections of poetry: Our Lively Kingdom (Bordighera Press, 2022), Always (WordTech Editions, 2014) and Terrain (WordTech Editions, 2007) and the chapbook, Love Song Hiroshima (Finishing Line Press, 2004). Her poems appear in numerous anthologies, including most recently Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry of Protest (South Jersey Culture and History Center, Stockton University), To Learn the Future: Poems for Teachers (Scottish Poetry Library), and Sharing the Earth: An International Environment Justice Anthology (University of Georgia Press). Her work appears in Ploughshares, Paterson Literary Review, Italian Americana, Ovunque Siamo, Pangyrus, Mom Egg Review, Nimrod, Alaska Quarterly Review, Antiphon, Ocean State Review, Literary Mama, Salamander, Prairie Schooner, Valparaiso, and many others.
Lisella has contributed her work to a number of exciting collaborative media exhibits such as “Lines Connecting Lines 2022” and “TELEPHONE, an international art game.” She has received residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, Millay, and Dorset colonies, and has received a number of grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to lead community poetry workshops.
She is also a scholar and critic, specializing in women’s writing, Italian American literature, American poetry, and modernism. She is the co-editor of Modernist Women Writers and American Social Engagement (Lexington Books) and has published essays on Genevieve Taggard, Muriel Rukeyser, Rosa Zagnoni Marioni, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Margaret Walker. She holds a BA in English from Barnard College, an MA in Creative Writing from New York University and a PhD in English from Tufts. She is Professor of English at Regis College in Massachusetts. Born and raised in Queens, New York, she makes her home in Massachusetts and co-curates the Italian American Writers in Boston Literary Series at I Am Books in Boston’s North End.