Maria Chessa Lai (born 1922 in Monti, Italy, died 2012 in Alghero, Italy) was a renowned poet writing in the Catalan Algherese dialect. She was three times winner of the prestigious Premio Ozieri awarded annually for the best new poetry written in a Sardinian minority language. As a bilingual poet she published her poems simultaneously in Algherese and Italian. The majority of her work was collected together and published in the volume La Mia Mar in 2005.