About Mona Lisa Saloy
Mona Lisa Saloy is an African-American poet and folklorist born in New Orleans. She is the poet laureate of Louisiana for 2021–23. Her first collection of poetry, Red Beans & Ricely Yours: Poems (Truman State University Press) won the 2005 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry as well as the Pen Oakland-Josephine Miles 16th Annual National Literary Awards in 2006. Her second published collection, Second Line Home: New Orleans Poems, was published by Truman State University Press in 2014.A prolific writer of both poetry and on folklore traditions in Louisiana, Saloy earned a PhD and an MFA from Louisiana State University, an MA from San Francisco State University, and a BA from the University of Washington. Her work has been published in numerous academic and literary journals, including Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies, Callaloo, Southern Journal of Linguistics, African American Review, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, and more.
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