Mona Lisa Saloy, Ph.D., is an award-winning author & folklorist, educator, and scholar of Creole culture in articles, documentaries, and poems about Black New Orleans before and after Katrina. Currently, Conrad N. Hilton Endowed Professor and of English at Dillard University, Dr. Saloy has documented Creole culture in sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games to discuss the importance of play. She writes on the significance of the Black Beat poets--especially Bob Kaufman, and on the African American Toasting Tradition, Black & Creole talk, and on life and keeping Creole after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. A poet, her first book, Red Beans & Ricely Yours, won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Her collection of poems, Second Line Home, captures day-to-day New Orleans speech, family dynamics, celebrates New Orleans, and gives insight into the unique culture the world loves. Saloy’s screenplay for the documentary Easter Rock premiered in Paris, at the Ethnograph Film Festival & with Folklorists in Washington, D.C. at the national Black museum. She's lectured on Black Creole Culture at the Smithsonian, Purdue University, and the University of Washington. Her current documentary, Bleu Orleans, is on Black Creole Culture at Dillard University. Her verse on the Black Arts Movement appears in the Journal of Pan African Studies. Marquis Who’s Who: awarded Saloy with the prestigious Albert Nelson Marquise Lifetime Achievement Award, which puts Saloy in the 1.5% of 5,000,000 Academics in America. She is featured in Bowman, Catharine Savage, and Olivia McNeely Pass. “Mona Lisa Saloy.” Louisiana Poets: A Literary Guide.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019. Saloy research on Zora Neale Hurston is used for the Algiers/NOLA TriCentennial Commission App & promo

https://neworleanshistorical.org/items/show/1455

and Saloy is featured Nationally with top scholars and Endowed Chairs:

http://www.culturalfront.org/2018/11/black-women-literature-scholars.html

Her most recent national listing: “Ten Women (writers) to Follow in NOLA”

https://www.pw.org/content/ten_women_to_follow

At Poets House in New York City Saloy discusses NOLA's own Bob Kaufman, Black Beat Poet born and raised in the 7th Ward!

https://poetshouse.org/event/passwords-chapbooks/ 

Saloy’s verse in an Online Program: Poets House Presents: 

https://poetshouse.org/event/poets-house-presents-mona-lisa-saloy/

Most recent poem published in Ishmael Reed’s Konch Magazine:

https://www.ishmaelreedpub.com/special-issue-volume-i 

In October 2020, she was an opening speaker at the Dance Forever! Conference by the Tekrema Center, their annual signature dance event. She was named to an editorial reviewer for Meridians:  Feminism, race, transnationalism, a peer reviewed journal, as well as the Editorial Board and Review Team for Social Sciences, a peer-reviewed academic journal.

Mona Lisa Saloy writes for those who don’t or can’t tell Black Creole cultural stories.

Website: www.monalisasaloy.com

Twitter Username: @redbeansista

Publications

• Red Beans & Ricely Yours: Poems & Second Line Home , Truman State University Press, 2014 (February 20)

Awards

• PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award, Poetry(2006)
• T.S. Eliot Prize in Poetry(2005)
• Andrew Mellon Sabbatical Fellow(2013)
• UNCF/Mellon Sabbatical Fellow(2012)
• New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Archive Award(2012)

Employment

• Conrad N. Hilton Endowed Professor of English at Dillard University (August 1991 - )
• Associate Professor, English, CW, Folklore at University of Washington (October 2005 - June 2007)

Degrees

• Bachelor of Arts in English & Creative Writing from University of Washington (1979)
• Master of Arts in English & Creative Writing, Poetry from San Francisco State University (1981)
• Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing: Drama & Fiction from Louisiana State University (1989)
• Doctoral Degree in English with Folklore from Louisiana State University (2005)

Genres of Interest

Fiction, Creative nonfiction, Playwriting, Screenwriting, Children's literature , Poetry