"In every poem, she keeps her fury contained, but omnipresent, so that it resembles a cornered dog's warning growl, yet she hints of happier possibilities." --Booklist

"Beatty does offer deeply visceral and sensory work, especially in the second and third sections of this three-part book. . . . She risks relative boldness and deep emotional commitment, disregarding political correctness in respect for this less readily sanitized realm of experience." --Publishers Weekly

"Her poems speak to us head-on, with courage and a contemporaneous eloquence." --Yusef Komunyakaa

"Raw, energetic, gritty, risky, sexy, and real. . . . The power of these short narratives is often cumulative, building a vision of the world seen through the eyes of a wanderer, a woman, a waitress." --Dorianne Laux

Jan Beatty, winner of the 2000 Creative Achievement Award from the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, has also won two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She has held jobs as a welfare caseworker, a rape counselor, and a nurse's aide. She has worked in maximum security prisons, hoagie huts, burger joints, jazz clubs, and diners. Her chapbook, Ravenous, won the 1995 State Street Press Chapbook Prize. Her latest collection, Boneshaker, was published in 2002 by the University of Pittsburgh Press.