Featured writer "Krissy" Gasbarre is a native of DuBois, Pennsylvania and the Brooklyn-based author of How to Love an American Man: A True Story (HarperCollins, 2011) whose potential dramatic rights are represented by United Talent Agency. Gasbarre’s journalism background is distinguished by years as a celebrity interviewer for leading magazines.  She launched her professional publishing career as an intern at The New York Times Company, followed by positions in marketing and publishing at Simon & Schuster.  In 2007, she relocated to Italy to work as an English tutor in Milan and Reggio-Emilia until a family tragedy brought her stateside and catalyzed the writing of her memoir.
    Gasbarre is currently at work on her second book and will host a women's conference in New York City this fall.
    Joel Allegretti, best known as a pop culture chronicler, just published poetry book Europa/Nippon/New York: Poems/Not-Poems (Poets Wear Prada, 2012). He is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Thrum: Poems (Poets Wear Prada, 2010); Father Silicon (The Poet's Press, 2006); and The Plague Psalms (The Poet's Press, 2000.)
Allegretti, now a resident of Fort Lee, North Jersey, is a member of the Academy of American Poets and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP.) His poetry has appeared in The New York Quarterly, Margie, Fulcrum, Rattapallax, Art/Life, Slipstream, Confrontation, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics and other national journals.       As to recent news, Joel’s writing is represented in new anthology, In the BLACK/In the RED (Helicon Nine, 2012), which includes poems by Dana Gioia.
    His fiction has appeared in Think Journal, The Adroit Journal, autolycus: rogue literary journal and Petrichor Machine.  Allegretti’s play, Aqua: A Play in One Repeated Act, was a semifinalist in the 2010 KNOCK International Play Contest.  He wrote the texts for three song cycles by Frank Ezra Levy. 

About Italian American Writers Association (IAWA)
IAWA aims to promote Italian American literature by encouraging the writing, reading, publication, distribution, translation, and study of Italian American writing. For membership information, please visit www.iawa.net.  To learn more about IAWA, also visit the Italian American Writers Cafe blog at http://www.i-italy.org/bloggers/italian-american-writers-cafe