For any fan of underground poetry, any fan with insight, Peter Marra is the unsung hero of our world. He doesn't write for me, he doesn't write for you, and some days I wonder if he even writes for himself; Peter writes for the manic soul of American poetry itself. --Mike Joyce, Editor-in-Chief of Literary Orphans

“Thomas Fucaloro is here and he is showing you his big messy heart. (Actually, if you’re looking for other body parts, you’ll find most of them in this book.) ‘Love is a napkin,’ he says, and I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s going to take. ” –Mark Bibbins, The Anxiety of Coincidence

Writes Sandra Mortola Gilbert, author of The Culinary Imagination: "... Personal Effects is both a brilliant tribute to a powerful scholar-memoirist and a significant contribution to Italian-American studies and cultural studies more generally. It is a collection to savor!"

Of Journey to the Heart Waters, Pasquale Verdicchio writes: "Out of such recounting emerges a figure that has gained great currency and importance for a re-reading of the Italian South and its relationship to other Mediterranean realities, the Black Madonna ..."

Literary Manhattan lists IAWA among the 42 spoken word poetry events good for dancing around a fire

LIPS Magazine editor and award-winning poet Laura Boss sees Balik as "that rare voice filled with grace and compassion and a lack of cynicism" and finds "the haunting poems dealing with pets" in this impressive debut "among the most moving animal poems I have ever read."

Stephen Siciliano has just completed writing The Goodfather, an historic novel about Vito Marcantonio, the most electorally successful political politician in U.S. history.

"Honesty and mystery coexist in the poems of Always. Lisella uses the resources of poetry to access a moving generosity, as powerfully felt rhythms and keen, courageous self-observation carry human experience to a place that is at once wilder and more encompassing than the ordinary." -Annie Finch