Gillan’s outlined in Writing Poetry to Save Your Life a syllabus for any MFA Program I would want to attend. The book is suggestive without being so ambitious as to produce any kind of anxiety. She doesn’t talk about writing in a way that makes it seem as though a writer even has the option of failing. Her confidence in each of her readers is contagious and frankly, quite refreshing. Her book is aimed to help us achieve our best writing, yes, but it’s also aimed at helping us become the best version of ourselves.

The Place I Call Home … contains some of the most honest poems about marriage and family a reader is likely ever to come across. The craft is there, the well chosen word or phrase, but the power of these poems comes also from the truth in them that is moving and rare.

Praise for All That Lies Between Us: “These poems are powerful in their honesty, their passion and their grief. They take us deep into the labyrinth of our humanity and — in the face of loss and death — show us the paradox of love in the center of our being.”

Maria Mazziotti Gillan … has experimented with a hybrid genre encompassing poetry, textbook, memoir, and meditation. Only a writer with her breadth of experience could have successfully welded these diverse modes into such a satisfying whole.