Daniela Gioseffi - Early Years: Biographical Details

Early Years: Biographical Details

Daniela Gioseffi was born in 1941 in Orange, New Jersey, the daughter of a Greek-Albanian Italian immigrant father, Daniel Donato Gioseffi, one of the first Italian immigrants to win a Phi Beta Kappa in the United States from the alpha chapter of Union College in Schenectady. Her mother was a war orphan of Polish and Russian Jewish descent who worked as a seamstress and dress designer. Because of her mother's orphan status, and her father's large Italian family, Gioseffi grew up with a strong imprint of Italian American culture. She grew up in Newark and attended Avon Avenue Public School, later moving to Little Falls, New Jersey, where she attended Passaic Valley High School and served as valedictorian of her graduating class of 1959. She was a member of the Honor Society, served on the twirling or drum majorette squad, and as a president of The Girls’ Athletic Association. Active in the drama club as a leading actress in several school plays, she co-edited the school newspaper writing several editorials of sociopolitical community concern. Next, she attended Montclair University to graduate near the top of her class and to be active in college theatre productions, holding leading roles and majoring in English Literature and Speech and Theatre, and was graduated in 1963. While at Montclair University, she began publishing poetry in the campus literary magazine. She won a scholarship to study World Drama at the well known Speech and Theatre Department of The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at CUA, Washington, D.C., with such luminaries as Philip Bosco and the Academy Award winning actress, Susan Sarandon, as classmates. During the next several years she published in various literary magazines, placing poems in such venues as The Paris Review, The Nation, Poetry East, Chelsea Literary Review, Choice – throughout the late 1960s and 70s. Her first novel with Doubleday, Dell, and New English Library, a feminist comedy titled The Great American Belly Dance was optioned for a screen play by Warner Bros. That first novel won her favorable reviews, most notably from Pulitzer and National Book Award Winning author, Larry McMurtry in The Washington Post. The book also earned her a tour of the United States and England, 1977–1979, during which Gioseffi was interviewed by various hosts of NPR and BBC radio and television both in the USA and Europe. She traveled widely in the US and Europe presenting a multimedia piece, The Birth Dance: A Celebration of Women and the Earth in Poetry, Music and Dance, for the New Feminist Talent Agency through the 1970s and 80's.

After publishing Eggs in the Lake her first collection of poems, 1979, she traveled the US giving readings and presentations of her work on numerous campuses. Gioseffi has lived the rest of her writing life in Brooklyn Heights New York City, where she created the First Brooklyn Bridge Poetry Walk – now produced by Poets House every year as a spring fund raiser . Since 1979, Gioseffi has been a member of Poets House, The Poetry Society of America, The Academy of American Poets, PEN American Center, and The National Book Critics Circle, as well as The Freedom from Religion Foundation. Among the notable poets who have written favorably of Gioseffi’s work and writings are Galway Kinnell, Robert Bly, D. Nurkse, Bob Holman, Milton Kessler, Philip Appleman, and Grace Paley.