Drew University Grad to Launch Poetry Book in New York City

Marisa Frasca, a 2013 graduate of Drew University’s Master’s of Fine Arts in Poetry program, will be launching her new book Via Incanto:Poems from the Darkroom at an event on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 6 p.m. at Poets House, 10 River Terrace in New York City.

The book launch is co-sponsored by Drew University’s Master of Fine Arts Program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation. “I am thrilled about Marisa’s book publication. It is another in a quickly growing pool of successful first books for graduates of Drew’s MFA Program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation,” said Sean Nevin, Director.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, click here.

Via Incanto: Poems from the Darkroom was recently published by Boridghera Press, a non-profit publisher of Italian-American literature based in New York City. The book was named first runner up for the 2013 National Bordighera Poetry Prize.

Fransca, a native of Italy, was the co-founder of Magia, Inc., an Italian children’s clothing company she ran for 27 years. Her poems and translations have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Voices of Italian Americana, 5 AM, Arba Sicula, Philadelphia Poets, Adanna Journal, and Embroidered Stories Anthology. Frasca also has studied as a Riggio fellow at The New School of Writing.

Two Drew Professors recently weighed in with reviews on the book:

“In poems of remarkable fortitude and clarity, Marisa Frasca, a self-described ‘hyphenated woman,’ navigates the passages, geographical and psychological, that allow her uneasy flow between Sicily and America, among all ‘our known/and unknown mothers.’ The journey in which the Atlantic transforms into ‘the old dark and narrow hallway of the immigrant’ is always less familiar than we might anticipate as these poems conflate past and present, ‘the displaced, the incomplete,/ the made new/ superimposed and pulled together in chorus,’” said Michael Waters.

“Frasca’s vision and passion are so arrived, so rich with variation, that they elevate us inside a lyric adventure,” said Judith Vollmer.

About Drew University

Drew University is a private, liberal arts university located in Madison, New Jersey, in the New York City metro area. Ranked among the top liberal arts institutions nationwide by U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, and Washington Monthly, Drew is also listed in Princeton Review’s Best 379 Colleges.

The Drew promise—We Deliver Full-Impact Learning to the World—emphasizes the university’s commitment to borderless education that enables a student’s greatest success in a globally connected world.

Drew has a total student enrollment of more than 2,000 in three schools: the College of Liberal Arts, the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, and the Drew Theological School. The undergraduate program offers degrees in 30 different disciplines, while Caspersen and the Theological School offer degrees at the master’s and doctoral levels.

Information courtesy of Elizabeth Moore.