Maria Terrone’s pas­sion for poet­ry dates to child­hood. After grad­u­at­ing Summa Cum Laude with a BA degree in English from Fordham University, she went direct­ly to work, bypass­ing the tra­di­tion­al MFA pro­gram. A staff posi­tion at Hunter College (CUNY) changed her life: shar­ing her uncir­cu­lat­ed poems with poet­ry pro­fes­sors, they urged her to take her writ­ing tal­ent seri­ous­ly.

To date, she has pub­lished four books of poet­ry. The Bodies We Were Loaned (The Word Works, 2002), fol­lowed by A Secret Room in Fall (2006), win­ner of the McGovern Poetry Prize from Ashland Poetry Press. In 2014, Bordighera Press pub­lished Eye to Eye. Her lat­est col­lec­tion, No Known Coordinates, appeared in May 2025 from The Word Works. Maria also has two poet­ry chap­books: American Gothic, Take 2 (Finishing Line Press, 2009) and Life, Death & Cash (Dancing Girl Press, 2024).

Her work has appeared in media includ­ing Poetry, Ploughshares, The Hudson Review, The Common, and Poet Lore, and sev­er­al times on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. Her poetry’s wide-rang­ing sub­ject mater has led to its inclu­sion in more than 30 antholo­gies themed to such top­ics as what makes a woman, the New York City sub­way, city bridges, fairy tales, dolls, Italian American iden­ti­ty, food, and war. Her poet­ry has been pub­lished abroad in Farsi and French trans­la­tion.

Maria is a fre­quent guest of The Hudson Review’s Writers in the Schools pro­gram, which has brought her into New York City pub­lic high schools. Since 2016, she has been poet­ry edi­tor of the schol­ar­ly and cre­ative jour­nal Italian Americana.

She began to write cre­ative non­fic­tion after the Guggenheim Museum com­mis­sioned her and nine oth­er authors to devel­op nar­ra­tives for its city­wide per­for­mance project, “stillspot­ting nyc.” She went on to pub­lish many essays and, in 2018, Bordighera Press debuted her prose col­lec­tion, At Home in the New World. Its open­ing essay, “Mystery, Menace and Early Sorrow,” was named a Notable essay in America’s Best Essays, 2019.

Some Honors

• McGovern Prize from Ashland Poetry Press for A Secret Room in Fall
• Elinor Benedict Prize in Poetry (Passages North)
• Allen Tate Memorial Award (Wind)
• Mathiasen Award (Harmony mag­a­zine, University of Arizona College of Medicine)
• Individual Artist Initiative Award, Queens Council on the Arts
• Fellow, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts