Louisa Calio

Calio was a founding member and the first Executive Director of City Spirit Artists, Inc. (1976–1981), a nonprofit organization in New Haven, Connecticut, funded by a Bicentennial Grant to make arts available to divergent populations. The program, which was to last one year, was developed by Calio into a project and later incorporated with her effort and efforts by members of her board who included Mary Hunter Wolf, President of the Center for Theater Techniques, Elisabeth Kubler, President of Long Wharf Theatre and U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro. Yale University, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, Yale's African American Center, educators, businessmen and women, City Spirit made the arts readily accessible for free through grants, in jails, halfway houses, senior citizen homes, community centers, public schools, hospitals and hospices. Calio later served as a creative writing instructor and a grants consultant to its board of directors for ten years. City Spirit Artists lasted 25 years.

Louisa Calio (born July 4, 1947 in Gravesend, Brooklyn) is an American poet, writer, multimedia performance artist and teacher. She has directed the Poets and Writers' Piazza for Hofstra University's Italian Experience for the past 10 years. Calio's writings have appeared internationally in anthologies, magazines and journals. She has been honored by Barnard College, Columbia University as a Feminist Who Changed America Second Wave 1963–1975. She has traveled to East and West Africa, lived in the Caribbean and documented her journeys in photographs and the written word, completing an epic poem "Journey to the Heart Waters" which was also the title of an exhibition of photos and poems that opened at Round Hill Resort in Montego Bay in 2007.