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Joseph Bathanti, M.A., M.F.A. Professor of Creative Writing at Appalachian State University, award-winning author, winner of Humanities Council’s 2002 Linda Flowers Prize Boone W: (828) 262-2337 H: (828) 297-4350 bathantjr@appstate.edu
About Joseph Bathanti: Joseph Bathanti was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. He has BA & MA degrees in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. Bathanti came to North Carolina as a VISTA Volunteer in 1976 to work with prison inmates. At present he is Professor of Creative Writing, and Co-Director of the Visiting Writers Series, at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. Bathanti is the author of four books of poetry: Communion Partners; Anson County; The Feast of All Saints; and This Metal, which was nominated for The National Book Award, and won the 1997 Oscar Arnold Young Award from The North Carolina Poetry Council for best book of poems by a North Carolina writer. His first novel, East Liberty, winner of the Carolina Novel Award, was published in 2001 by Banks Channel Books in Wilmington, NC. His latest novel, Coventry, winner of the 2006 Novello Literary Award, was published by Novello Festival Press in Charlotte, NC. They Changed the State: The Legacy of North Carolina’s Visiting Artists, 1971-1995, his book of nonfiction, was published in early 2007. Most recently, his collection of short stories, The High Heart, winner of the 2007 Spokane Prize, was published by Eastern Washington University Press in Fall 2007. His new collection of poems, Land of Amnesia, was published in early 2009 by Press 53. Star Cloud Press will publish his collection of poems, Restoring Sacred Art, in 2010. Bathanti's poetry, fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Shenandoah, Manhattan Poetry Review, The Nebraska Review, Carolina Quarterly, America, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Louisiana Literature, The Sun, The Texas Review, California Quarterly, West Branch, Southern Humanities Review, South Dakota Review, Kentucky Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Southern Poetry Review, The Hollins Critic, Tar River Poetry, South Carolina Review and many others. His one-act play, Afomo, won The Wachovia Playwrights Prize, The Playwrights Fund of North Carolina Prize and was produced by the Lab Theatre of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes in short fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction. He is the recipient of two Literature Fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council; The Samuel Talmadge Ragan Award, presented annually for outstanding contributions to the Fine Arts of North Carolina over an extended period; a Fellowship from The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry; the Bruno Arcudi Literature Prize; the Ernest A Lynton Faculty Award for Professional Service and Academic Outreach; the Aniello Lauri Award for Creative Writing; the Linda Flowers Prize; the Sherwood Anderson Award, the 2007 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Prize; and others.
Autobiography: Writing About Yourself
In this program, Joseph Bathanti examines, through his own published work and other texts, strategies of “telling” that have come to be known as autobiographical. The focus of this program is on how the idiosyncratic “I” and the human eye connect a writer to experiences. He explores how and where “truth” and imagination intersect to create transformation, universality, and what William Gass calls being “jointly human.” Program requirements: lectern, microphone
Demystifying Poetry: A Reading Reading from his own work and that of other poets, Joseph Bathanti will discuss the process of composition and revision, where stories come from, and how to strike the necessary balance between aesthetic distance and intimacy. He will also examine issues of starting and maintaining the habit of writing, which Flannery O’Connor called “the habit of being.” Program requirements: lectern, microphone
The Turf of Hankering
The title of this program is taken from one of Joseph Bathanti’s essays, which traces his journey of 20 years, literally and spiritually, from growing up in a large, northern city to becoming a citizen of the rural South. Bathanti reads from his essay, looking at the phenomenon of place and ideology in a writer’s life and that time-honored, often comical, conflict between so-called Yankees and Southerners. Program requirements: lectern, microphone
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