Maria Luisa Arroyo

Boricua poet and feminist intersectional educator María Luisa Arroyo’s poetry collections include Gathering Words: Recogiendo Palabras, and the chapbooks Flight (2016) and Destierro Means More than Exile. She was named Springfield’s Inaugural Poet Laureate in 2016, and received New England Public Radio’s Arts & Humanities Award in 2019. María Luisa has facilitated numerous poetry and writing workshops, and has written a guide to poetry for middle schoolers: Just Imagine in Springfield. 

She holds degrees from Colby College (BA), Tufts University (MA), and Pine Manor College (MFA). At Harvard, she completed her coursework, passed her oral exams and submitted the first two chapters of her dissertation on two Jewish German poets, Hilde Domin and Mascha Kaleko, who were forced into exile during the Nazi period. Maria Luis’s poems, essays, and work in the classroom are inspired by her study of and lived experience in four cultures and their languages: American, Puerto Rican, German, and Iranian.

Please visit the MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing program page to learn about the curriculum, faculty, program options, and more.