The Place I Call Home

The place that Maria Mazziotti Gillan calls home is a universal haven built of enduring memories and peopled by loving family. In Gillan's newest book of poetry, THE PLACE I CALL HOME, we share her complex emotions of an immigrant childhood in Paterson, New Jersey, in the 1950s, her long marriage, her husband's devastating illness, and her subsequent widowhood. Yet, we also share the sheltering family in which she grew up, the deep love binding her and her husband, the unfolding of her life as a mother and grandmother, and, most of all, her resilient spirit. She reminds us that even when the bud of youthful naïveté flowers into the reality of an uncaring universe, we are home again when we recall the protection we felt within the warm sanctuary of family. These poems are beautiful crystalline narratives, sometimes exuberant and sometimes poignant, but always unflinchingly true.


About the Author
Gillan, Maria Mazziotti: - Maria Mazziotti Gillan is the Founder and the Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ. She is also a Professor and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Binghamton University-State University of New York. She has published fourteen books of poetry, including THE WEATHER OF OLD SEASONS (Cross-Cultural Communications, 1993) WHAT WE PASS ON (Guernica Editions, 2010), and THE PLACE I CALL HOME (NYQ Books, 2012). With her daughter, she is co-editor of three anthologies published by Penguin/Putnam. She is also the editor of the award-winning Paterson Literary Review. Among her many honors, she received the 2011 Barnes and Noble Writers For Writers Award.