Prof. Moscaliuc Co-Edits New Poetry Collection ‘Fruits of the Earth’ with Retired Monmouth Professor Michael Waters

Mihaela Moscaliuc, Ph.D., professor of English and graduate program director at Monmouth University, is the co-editor of a newly released poetry anthology, "Fruits of the Earth: Harvest Poems," published by Penguin Random House as part of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series. The volume brings together 154 contemporary and classic poems from various continents and cultures that celebrate fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, and spices, and their meaning in our lives.

Moscaliuc collaborated with celebrated poet Michael Waters, a longtime Monmouth professor who retired in 2020, to assemble the collection. Zafira Demiri '24, a graduate student pursuing her master's degree in English, provided research assistance.

Published by one of the world's leading literary houses, the anthology underscores Penguin Random House's continuing commitment to poetry of lasting cultural importance. Moscaliuc and Waters co-edited a previous collection, "Border Lines: Poems of Migration," published in Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series in 2020.

The anthology serves an homage to the earth and a reminder of our responsibilities to tend it. As Moscaliuc and Waters suggest in the introduction, "through its bounty of fruits, vegetables, grains, and culinary herbs and spices, the earth has given us a home in [our] exile" from a divine existence, and might continue to do so for as long as we care for it." From an editor's perspective, any anthology is a labor of love, Moscaliuc says, and this one in particular arose from a commitment to act on that awe which we experience in our presence on earth, as well as from the accompanying sense of helplessness in the face of destruction.

Moscaliuc's scholarship and creative work often explore transnational and ecopoetic perspectives. She is the author or editor of several acclaimed poetry collections and volumes of literary translation, and she recently received a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship. Her poem "April 2020" received a Pushcart Prize and appears in "2026 Pushcart Prize L." Last year she was awarded a Pushcart for non-fiction.

Waters' honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Foundation, as well as five Pushcart Prizes. He is the author of 14 books of published poetry.

Moscaliuc and Waters will present a reading and discussion of "Fruits of the Earth" at Frenchtown Bookshop, in Frenchtown, New Jersey, on Nov. 18 at 6:30 p.m. The event, part of the shop's Visiting Poets Series, is free and open to the public.