Mona Lisa Saloy, Author and Folklorist, is currently visiting Associate Professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle for the 2005-06  year; for 2006-07 academic year.   Since, Katrina, she is on leave from Dillard University where she developed their Creative Writing Program.

Her Ph.D. is in English from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge where she received the MFA in Creative Writing.  Mona Lisa’s first collection of verse, Red Beans and Ricely Yours: Poems, won the T. S. Eliot Prize in poetry for 2005,  published by Truman State University Press; also, this collection was finalist for the Morgan Prize from StoryLine Press.  Dr. Saloy’s verse appears in the  anthology: Furious Flower: African American Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present.  Joanne V. Gabbin, editor.  Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004.   Occasionally, Mona Lisa writes and reads commentaries on the Black  historical 7th Ward neighborhood in New Orleans for Public Radio, WWNO, 89.9 fm.  Some of Saloy’s articles on Toasts, and the Lore of African American children are available on the Web at the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Folklife site.

Saloy won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from the United Negro College Fund/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to continue her research on Black Beat poet Bob Kaufman, who served as an important link to the Black arts movement.  Her article “Black Beats and Black Issues,” appears in Beat Culture and the New America 1950-1965. Lisa Phillips, editor.  New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1995.

Mona Lisa Saloy was Keynote Speaker at Re-Building New Orleans Conference at Tulane University; Writer in Residence at the Arna Bontemps Museum in Alexandria, Louisiana;  and guest writer at University of Missouri in  2005; since then, she was  featured writer at the Zora Neale Hurston Festival, at Santa Barbara Community College, and DeBose Festival featured writer  in 2006.

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A More Extended Bio

Mona Lisa Saloy is currently an Associate Professor of English, Director of Creative Writing at Dillard University, and a Doctoral Candidate at LSU in English and Anthropology. Ms Saloy won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from the United Negro College Fund/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to continue her research on Black Beat poet Bob Kaufman, who served as an important link to the Black arts movement. She received the M.F.A. at Louisiana Sate University in Baton Rouge, the M.A. in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, and the B.A. at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Mona Lisa Saloy’s most recent publication of prose is in "A Night in St. Tammany Parish," Callaloo. 24.1(2001)162-163. Her scholarship on the Beats appears in "Black Beats and Black Issues," Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965. Lisa Phillips, ed. NY: The Whitney Museum of American Art, 1995.153-165. Her recent ethnographic articles are "Still Laughing to Keep from Crying: Black Humor," Louisiana Folklife Festival Guide. Monroe & Baton Rouge: Louisiana Division of Folklife, 2001. 14-15; and "New Orleans Lagniappe: Terms of our Endearment," Ties that Bind: Making Family New Orleans Style. New Orleans: Ashé Cultural Center and Ebon Images, 2001.53-59. She is included in My Mother Had a Dream, African-American Women Share Their Mother’s Words of Wisdom. Tamara Nikuradse, ed. New York: Dutton, the Penguin Group, 1996.

Ms Saloy’s verse appears most recently in "Word Works" a film by Betsy Weiss, part of Poets in the Dream State: An Anthology of Louisiana Writers, NOVAC 2001. Louisiana English Journal, 1(7)2000; Cultural Vistas 11.2(2000)83; Louisiana Literature, 1999; Double Dealer Redux 1998; Ishmael Reed’s Konch,1997.

Some of Mona Lisa Saloy's poems appear in Immortelles, Poems of Life and Death by New Southern Writers, New Orleans: Xavier Review Press, 1995, and in 1994 The Southern Review. She is featured in The American Poetry Archives’ Color: A Sampling of Contemporary African American Writers, 1994. Others include Louisiana English Journal, 1994; African American Review, 1993. She is in the seminal Louisiana Women Writers, New Essays and a Comprehensive Bibliography, edited by Brown and Ewell, from LSU Press, 1992. Ms. Saloy's previously published poems appear in the following: Word Up, Black Poetry of the 80s from the Deep South, The Black Scholar, The Haight Ashberry Literary Journal, Dark Waters, Testimony, Louisiana Laurels, and others.

Previous awards are the 1993 Delta Sigma Theta's ARTIE, and the 1989 "Arts Excellence Award" in literature; in 1984, a National Endowment for the Arts supported post as Poet-in-Residence at the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society. Mona Lisa Saloy was a Poet-in-the-Schools in Washington State, California, and Louisiana where she developed the successful Arts in Education program for the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge. In addition, she has collected and published folklore research on kids' lore and adult male lore in Louisiana and Michigan. Mona Lisa Saloy is on the Advisory Board of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival.

Mona Lisa says that she writes to speak for those who don't, to learn their lessons, and to celebrate their spirits.