Family Stories

Joe and Paula McHugh are a husband and wife team who believe strongly in the power of stories and their American Stories website is a celebration of American family stories. Joe McHugh knows Maria's hometown of Paterson, New Jersey because it is the city where he spent most of early years. Paterson was and continues to be a community of immigrants - a place people come to hoping to improve their lives in this experiment we call America.

In Maria's interview, she tells the story of the courtship of her father and mother which began in San Mauro, Italy and brought them to Paterson, New Jersey. The focus in this story is her mother, Angelina, who Maria described in a poem as ''Soothsayer, Healer,Tale-teller / There was nothing you could not do.''

Click this link to listen to the interview and a poem Maria wrote about her mother as a tribute after her death, and listen to Maria's stories: about her mother's "E.S.P" and her mother wanting to go back to school, self-learning, her granddaughter's yearbook and America.

Angelina Schiavo Mazziotti

Further Reading - an article in The New York Times about Maria finding her heritage and her voice. 

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets which pairs her poems with her paintings. Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

Saturday June 13 Poetry Reading with José Antonio Rodríguez

The featured poet for Saturday, June 13th's Distinguished Poets Series at the Poetry Center at PCCC will be José Antonio Rodríguez. This will be a virtual reading and workshop.

 

José Antonio Rodríguez is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent of which are This American Autopsy, cited as “new and noteworthy” by The New York Times, and The Day’s Hard Edge. He’s also the author of the memoir House Built on Ashes, shortlisted for the PEN America Los Angeles Award and the Lambda Literary Award. His poems have been published widely, including in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, The Missouri Review, and Paterson Literary Review. His work has been anthologized most recently in Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925-2025, How to Get Home in the Dark: Poems on Mental Health and Healing, and the fifteenth edition of The Norton Introduction to Literature. He holds degrees in Biology and Theatre Arts and a Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University. He is a gay Mexican immigrant and first-generation high school and college graduate who teaches writing and literary translation in the M.F.A. program at The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley. Learn more about him at jarodriguez.org 

Registration is required for all workshops with a fee of $20. Please check registration availability by emailing Cynthia Pagan at the Poetry Center. 

Poetry Center readings are always free and open to the public and are recorded and archived later for viewing on the Poetry Center’s YouTube channel.

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings.
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

Latest Issue of Lips Reading June 6

 

On June 6, 2026, there will be a launch event for the new issue of LIPS poetry magazine. Issue 63/64 marks the 45th year of Lips. 

 

The reading will be from 2pm to 4 pm at the Clifton Public Library main branch at 292 Piaget Ave Clifton, NJ 07011, and will feature poets who have work in this issue.

 

Lips was founded in 1981 by poet Laura Boss, a close friend of Maria Gillan and a fellow poet. They read together many times and hosted poetry workshops together, including their long-running poetry weekends.

 

Laura served as the Lips editor until her passing in April 2021.

Laura and Maria

The magazine is now supported by the non-profit Laura Boss Poetry Foundation. The editor, Jim Gwyn, will be the event's host.

Lips has published poems by Robert Bly, Allen Ginsberg, Ruth Stone, David Ignatow, Marge Piercy, Michael Benedikt, Nicholas Christopher, Anne Waldman, Ishmael Reed, Gregory Corso, Lyn Lifshin, Ted Berrigan, Paul Hoover, Jana Harris, Toi Derricotte, Joseph Bruchac, Alice Notley, Warren Woessner, Robert Phillips, Hal Sirowitz, Theodore Weiss, Alicia Ostriker, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Stanley H. Barkan, Michael Weaver, Molly Peacock, and Richard Kostelanetz.

Lips will be accepting submissions for the 2027 issue from September 1, through November 30.  

Poetry Reading and Workshop with Leah Umansky June 6

On Saturday, June 6, 2026, poet Leah Umansky will conduct a virtual workshop followed by a reading as part of the Poetry Center at PCCC's Distinguished Poets Series. Virtual workshops via Zoom will run from 1 PM – 2:30 PM (ET), followed by the poet’s reading from 2:30 PM – 3 PM (ET).

Leah Umansky is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently, OF TYRANT (Word Works Books 2024). She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. She is the creator of the STAY BRAVE Substack, which encourages women-identifying creatives to inspire other women-identifying creatives to stay brave in their creative pursuits. Her creative work has been featured on PBS and The Slowdown podcast, and in such places as The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, The Nation, Poetry magazine, Bennington Review, and American Poetry Review. 

Leah is an educator and writing coach who has taught workshops for all ages at venues such as The New York Public Library, The Guggenheim, Poets House, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and elsewhere. Her fourth collection of poems, ORDINARY SPLENDOR, is about wonder, joy, and love. She can be found at leahumansky.com

Registration is required for all workshops with a fee of $20. Please check registration availability by emailing Cynthia Pagan at the Poetry Center. 

Poetry Center readings are always free and open to the public and are recorded and archived later for viewing on the Poetry Center’s YouTube channel.

The Poetry Center offers poetry writing workshops in-person and virtually in conjunction with the Distinguished Poets Reading Series. Over the years, distinguished poets have included poet laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, Inaugural poets and others of national and international reputation, such as Allen Ginsberg, William Stafford, Amiri Baraka, Lucille Clifton, Stanley Kunitz, Billy Collins, Marge Piercy, Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Kim Addonizio, Billy Collins, Dorianne Laux, Jan Beatty, Robert Sward, Patricia Smith, Martín Espada, Toi Derricotte and Richard Blanco.

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings.
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com, and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.