Daniela Gioseffi was born in 1941 in Orange, New Jersey, the daughter of an Arbereshe 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.
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.