Dr. Mona Lisa Saloy, Author and Folklorist, is currently Associate Professor of English, Director, the Daniel C. Thompson/ Samuel DuBois Cook Honors Program; founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Dillard University. Mona Lisa’s collection of verse, Red Beans and Ricely Yours: Poems, won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Prize in 2006 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in poetry for 2005, published by Truman State University Press; also, this collection was finalist for the Morgan Prize from Story-Line Press. In October of 2006, The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia commissioned Mona Lisa Saloy to compose and perform a poem entitled “We” celebrating 2006 Liberty Medal Recipients: President William J. Clinton and President George H.W. Bush. Hear the poem on her newly released audio book, Red Beans and Ricely Yours + from Truman Press. Saloy’s Ph.D. is in English from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge where she received the MFA in Creative Writing; the M.A. from San Francisco State University; the B.A. from the University of Washington, Seattle.