PCCC Poetry Center Receives NEA Grant

The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College (PCCC) has been awarded a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

The Poetry Center will use the funding to provide free poetry workshops to seniors in Passaic County and publish an anthology of their work.

The Poetry Center was founded in 1980 by Executive Director Maria Mazziotti Gillan. For over 30 years, it has organized quality programs that have brought it to national attention, such as the Paterson Literary Review, four poetry contests, and a cable TV show.

The Center reaches more than one million people annually, and is unique not only because of the number and variety of services it offers, but because of its connection with an urban, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic community. It brings national attention to our college.

The Poetry Center at PCCC is one of 1,145 not-for-profit national, regional, state, and local organizations recommended for a grant as part of the federal agency's second round of fiscal year 2011 grants. In total, the NEA will distribute more than $88 million to support projects nationwide.

Maria Gillan with then U.S.Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz
at a Poetry Center reading in 2001.