Our finding aid to these materials can be found here: At library.shu.edu you can see the collection description and navigate through specific folders. Note that the last two items in the container list are this blog and her official website.
The archive uses Seton Hall's digital preservation system (Preservica). The Gillan websites are among the first to be hosted at the university and made available to researchers using this system.
The Maria Mazziotti Gillan collection dates from 1985 to 2013 and documents the activities of poet and program director Maria Mazziotti Gillan as a professor, program director, editor, and writer of numerous publications and colleges. The collection comprises correspondence, photographs, newsletters, newspaper clippings, and magazines. This collection will prove valuable for researchers interested in the work of Italian American women in literature.
Maria Mazziotti Gillan (1940-present) is a famous poet of the 21st century. She has won numerous awards for her writings, 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, as well as her involvement in the community, 2014 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.
Gillan was born in 1940 to her Italian immigrant working-class parents and grew up in Paterson, NJ. She attended Paterson public schools and graduated from Eastside High School, a place where she began writing poems as a young teenager. Gillan attended Seton Hall University and New York University graduating with an M.A. in Literature and graduated Drew University with a Ph.D.
Gillan discovered her love of teaching when she obtained a teaching position at Caldwell College but left to raise her two children. At the age of 40, Gillan published her first book that would become one of twenty and win her numerous awards such as the 2008 American Book Award for All That Lies Between Us. Gillan is also the co-editor of four anthologies and editor of the Paterson Literary Review.
In 1980 after securing a grant from the State Council on the Arts, Gillan gave poetry in Paterson a home and opened the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College. Although there were doubts about the Center in its location, the establishment flourished presenting notable people, such as Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, and Stanley Kunitz.
Today Gillan lives in Hawthorne, NJ. She has taught poetry at Binghamton University-SUNY, where she was the director of the creative writing program. She continues to serve as director of the Poetry Center, and the Passaic County Cultural and Heritage Council.
Gillan has taken up painting and has added some images into her poetry books. She has no plans to retire but plans to keep writing and traveling.
This collection is part of The Monsignor Field Archives & Special Collection Center Repository. https://library.shu.edu/archives
Contact:
Archives, Walsh Library
400 South Orange Ave
South Orange NJ 07079 USA
973-761-9476
email: archives@shu.edu
