“Alice James Books has remained committed to women writers, and Lit from Inside includes a refreshing range of poems that explore women’s sexuality, motherhood, and reproductive issues. Notably, such poems appear alongside those that engage questions about God, war, difference, death, love, and illness. Thus, the anthology validates women’s experiences as human experience.”
—AGNI Online

“. . . a wild stretching voice through time and knowledge. . . . Lit from Inside is an enticing pick for any literary poetry collection. . .”
—Midwest Book Review

“Alice James Books is one of the pure sources of American poetry. . . [the press] has started the careers of too many poets to name. This anthology is a birthday celebration in book form. . .”
—NPR.org

“The history of American poetry is the history of the small press, and Alice James Books, true to its origins in the Seventies as a collective operation, is a large and very distinctive chapter in that history, well deserving of this anthology showcasing its poets and work, both experimental and traditional, that ranks among the most important of the past four decades. The next time a student poet asks me for an anthology that will teach her the art in its most exemplary and current state, this is the one I will hand her.”
—B.H. Fairchild

“The founding members of Alice James Books welcomed me, in 1975, to a crew of feisty individuals committed to poetry. Unfettered by demands of market or profit, the press published—for forty years— tantalizing collections. Culture; family; feminism; friendship; history; passion; racism; war: it’s all in this anthology, a rewarding testimony to the independent spirit.”
—Robin Becker

“. . .I can’t forget the example of those early gatherings, the orderly procedures and professional force, all triggered by an idea of liberation and poetry. . .”
—Fanny Howe

“The list of authors is remarkable for its breadth, variety, and passion. This is a big book: a reader needs fortitude to undertake its 207 pages, but anthologies are meant to be sipped, not gulped thirstily…I have downed the entire collection, 130-odd disparate celebratory, elegiac, lyrical, lofty, comic, surreal, imagist, formalist, postmodern bards. The assortment is idiosyncratic, the range of voices an styles embraces the familiar personal narrative voice and the innovative, often dissonant music of more experimental poems.”
—Maxine Kumin

“Alice James Books is proof of the adage ‘the older you are, the better you get.'”
—Publishers Weekly