On Saturday, December 11, 2010 the Italian American Writers Association (IAWA) invites two dynamic poets show work celebrate art and life – Jim Pignetti, an artist, businessman and of late poetry festival impresario and Alison Koffler, an award-winning poet and poetry teacher whose work weaves human existence with inevitable passings of nature

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    Alison Koffler finds that her poems generally branch forth from that fertile and often uneasy space between the world of humans and the world of nature. She attended the City College of New York as an undergraduate and received her Masters’ Degree in English from Lehman College. She was the recipient of the Poetry Teacher of the Year in 2003 and three times the winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts’ BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) Award for poetry in 1993, 2000 and 2006. Her poems have appeared in such publications as Iris: a Journal for Women, Heliotrope, Kalliope, Home Planet News and Universe at Your Door - The Slabsides Poets, and she is the author of the chapbook Poems From Animal Trance.  She currently works as an on-site teacher-consultant for the New York City Writing Project at Lehman College, and lives in the Bronx and Woodstock, New York.

Jim Pignetti, an artist and businessman, started writing when he discovered that notebooks are cheaper than a New York studio, paint and canvas.  After leaving his native Astoria at 17 years old to attend Cooper Union, and a sojourn to other neighborhoods, he returned to his childhood newspaper route to create metalmen, a metal distribution warehouse. 
    Pignetti founded the New York Stories Writing Group and later with City Lore’s Steve Zeitlin, co-founded the Annual Brevitas Festival of the Short Poem based on the contributions of an online poetry circle called Brevitas. The group has celebrated while Pignetti has been instrumental in producing the annual anthology of approximately 40 poets.  Among the journals Pignetti’s work can be found in are Feile-Feste, More Sweet Lemons, and Mobius. Recently he felt called upon to plant a small vineyard and is teaching himself the art of vinification, a craft his ancestors forgot to leave instructions on.

   For samples of their writing, visit http://italianamericanwritersassoc.wordpress.com/

The reading takes place Saturday, December 11, 2010, 5:45 p.m. to 7:45 p.m., at the Cornelia St. Café, 29 Cornelia Street, NYC, (212-989-9319). The evening starts with Open Mic readings of five minutes each. IAWA is a 501(3)©not-for-profit corporation. Since 1991, the organization has given voice to writers through its Open Reading series at Cornelia St. Café every month. For membership information, visit www.iawa.net