Maria Mazziotti Gillan is Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic Country Community College, and Editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She is the author of over a dozen works. Among her many honors, she received the 2008 American Book Award, and 2011 Barnes and Noble Writers For Writers Award. Other awards received by Gillan include the May Sarton Award, the Fearing Houghton Award, New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowships in Poetry, and the American Literary Translators Association Award through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pietro di Donato award, and the John Fante award from the Sons of Italy in America. She lives in New Jersey.