Blurbs about Nina Romano's collection of poems, Cooking Lessons

Do not read this book if you are hungry. Do not read this book if the beauty of the Italian language, the joy of Italian life, and the flavors and smells of Italian food drive you mad with desire. Do not read this book unless you are prepared to drop everything, fly to Rome, and fall in love. Or save yourself the trouble: read this book right now, experience it all, and thank Nina Romano for creating a poetic banquet rich enough to feed a multitude of hungry readers.

-- Campbell McGrath

Satisfying as an elegant seven-course meal, Nina Romano's poems are sensuously delicious. Reading these poems, you may not learn how to cook, but you will learn about abundances and scarcity, the elaborate journeys families make. Romano employs images of food as love, nourishment, communication her poems are irresistible, complex, and rich with flavor. Sit down and enjoy the feast.

--Denise Duhamel

Nina Romano's Cooking Lessons is a sensory delight not just food you can taste the rich, rich magic of all of life in these love poems for the world. A celebratory, embracing spirit dominates this fine debut collection.

--Jim Daniels

In "Cooking Lessons" Nina Romano serves up a brew of tender and bittersweet poems, steeped in history and simmered in love. She celebrates the simple virtues of food, family, and the communal table. She knows that culture is everything we don't have to do to survive- it's poetry, it's cuisine, it's remembering our roots and passing our gifts on to others.

--John Dufresne.

What a pleasure to read these savory and evocative poems of good food, rich family traditions, and love. Cooking Lessons is teeming with the textures and flavors of actual life. These poems are recipes for healing and delight.

--Michael Hettich

What I love most about Nina Romano's Cooking Lessons is the way it deftly mixes delicious ingredients into well-crafted and beautiful poems. She has written the Great Italo-American poetry book of love and food and Nina's wise and compassionate voice urges us to join her in the banquet. The exquisite particulars of tomatoes, garlic, roasted peppers and the like, combined with her evocations of place and memory, lead us unfailingly toward a sensual, lyrical feast.

--Jesse Millner

About Nina s fiction

In a commendation note by author John Dufresne,
(Louisiana Power and Light, Deep in the Shade of Paradise, Love Warps the Mind a Little) he writes:

Nina Romano knows that only what passes is of lasting value, that we are in danger of losing everything we need, including our histories, our families, our love, and ourselves. Her prose is luminous, lyrical, and passionate. Romano has what Nabokov called shamanstvo, the enchanter quality she casts a spell and creates magic on the page. She carries you away to a more vivid and compelling world than the one you live in. Read her tales and remind yourself why you fell in love with books in the first place.

In a commendation from Janet Burroway (Writing Fiction, Imaginative Writing:
The Elements of Craft) she writes of Romano s fiction:

Nina Romano was my student and conferee at the FIU Key West Writer's Conference in fall 2006, where she performed with great energy, intelligence and industry. She is capable of equal tact and incisiveness in the critiquing of other work, and, as a writer, an ability to grasp quickly and express in depth. Her novel in draft, The Secret Language of Women, shows a sensitivity to both character and language that bodes well for her future as a writer.

Rock Press has submitted Nina Romano's book, Cooking Lessons, as a possible nominee for the Pulitzer Prize.