Joseph Bathanti

Joseph Bathanti, born on July 20, 1953, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a poet, novelist, and educator whose work is deeply rooted in his upbringing in the East Liberty neighborhood. East Liberty, a historically Italian-American community, shaped Bathanti’s early life and creative imagination. He attended Catholic school and credits Catholicism for nourishing his creative impulse. In an interview with Appalachian Explorations, Bathanti reflected on the influence of Catholicism, describing it as "absolutely like magical realism" and comparing biblical stories to "one groovy adventure after another" (Henion 9). 

Bathanti earned a BA in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh in 1975. The following year, he joined Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), a domestic branch of the Peace Corps, which relocated him to North Carolina. There, he was assigned to a small state-operated facility in Huntersville, Mecklenburg County, where he taught and mentored individuals serving sentences. This experience was life-changing and marked the beginning of his lifelong involvement working with the people within carceral institutions. Bathanti continued to volunteer long after his VISTA contract expired. 

In an interview with D.G. Martin, Bathanti recounts how he knew he wanted to be a writer upon coming to North Carolina, stating how he "was trying to look outside myself for stories." During this time, he began leading informal creative writing workshops in carceral settings—an experience he described as the beginning of his own education. Bathanti worked on poems and short stories and frequently submitted his work to local journals such as Tar River Poetry and Carolina Quarterly, achieving  varying degrees of publication success.

His first poetry collection, Communion Prayers (1986), draws from his experiences growing up in a religious family and attending parochial school in Pittsburgh. His second collection, Anson County (1989), explores the lives of rural North Carolinians. He published a third collection, The Feast of All Saints (1994), before releasing the award-winning This Metal (1996), which was nominated for the National Book Award and won the 1997 Oscar Arnold Young Award. During this time, Bathanti earned an MA in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh in 1988, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College in 1991.

Despite relocating to North Carolina, Bathanti’s Pennsylvania roots remained central to his creative work. His first novel, East Liberty (2001), a coming-of-age story set in his childhood neighborhood, explores Catholicism, race relations, and mother-son dynamics. The novel, which won the Carolina Novel Award, includes real-life locations such as Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Primary School. The novel's unconventional structure, which jumps back and forth in time and includes the protagonist's dreams, reflects the episodic nature of memory and the protagonist's unique perception of his world.

Bathanti’s second novel, Coventry (2006), draws upon his experience as a volunteer with the North Carolina Department of Correction. Winner of the 2006 Novello Literary Award, the novel examines the psychological toll of working in corrections and blurs the lines between reality and illusion. The novel’s themes and style reflect Bathanti’s view of prisons as complex institutions that confine not only those who are incarcerated but also those who work within them, shaping lives in ways in illogical ways. In an interview with D.G. Martin for North Carolina Bookwatch, Bathanti relates how he wanted to take his experience within carceral institutions and "refine it into a story that didn't simply sensationalize crimes in prison but was in some way a more impressionistic look at prisons" because he had come "to look at prisons as more of a phenomenon than something that you can talk about in some logical way" (Bathanti, interview).

In early 2007, Bathanti published his first work of nonfiction, They Changed the State: The Legacy of North Carolina's Visiting Artist, 1971-1995. Later that year, he published his first collection of short stories, The High Heart (2007). The stories in the collection are linked by the main character, Fritz Sweeny, and his dysfunctional parents. Author Nino Ricci compared The High Heart to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County (1927). Once again, Bathanti turns to his roots, setting his characters in Pittsburgh during the 1960s and 1970s. The book, with its complex characters and skillful prose, was well-received by critics and won the 2007 Spokane Prize.

In 2007, Bathanti published his first nonfiction book, They Changed the State: The Legacy of North Carolina's Visiting Artist, 1971-1995, and his first short story collection, The High Heart, which won the Spokane Prize. The stories follow Fritz Sweeny and his dysfunctional family in 1960s-70s Pittsburgh. Author Nino Ricci compared The High Heart to William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County. In a review for The Pedestal Magazine, Alicia Osborn praised Bathanti’s vivid character portrayals and stated that the Pittsburgh he describes "is more accurate than what you could glean from a map."

Bathanti’s poem "Knocked," from Restoring Sacred Art, was selected for publication by the Public Poetry Project of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book in 2010. He was named the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for the Western Region of the North Carolina Poetry Society (2011-2012), received the 2012 Will D. Campbell Award for Creative Nonfiction, and served as North Carolina Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014.

In 2013, Bathanti published Sonnets of the Cross, a volume of poetry that explores themes of faith, redemption, and human suffering. That same year, he won the Mary Frances Hobson Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Letters. A video profile, Bathanti, created by Kevin Balling of Appalachian State University, combined interviews and visual interpretations of Bathanti’s work to document his writing life.

Bathanti’s contributions to literature and education have been widely recognized. In 2016, he received the North Carolina Award in Literature, the state’s highest civilian honor, and was inducted into the Order of the Long Leaf of Pine in recognition of his service to North Carolina. In 2018, Bathanti was named the inaugural McFarlane Family Distinguished Professor in Interdisciplinary Education at Appalachian State University. Dr. Clark Maddux, director of the Watauga Residential College, aptly summarized Bathanti’s impact, "[He] brings us a wealth of experience in building partnerships across the region, an unparalleled depth of creativity, and an encyclopedic knowledge of experiential learning" (Appalachian Today). He has also served as a writer-in-residence at the Charles George Veterans Affairs Medical Center. In 2014, he co-founded a creative writing program with Dr. Bruce Kelly to support veterans living with PTSD (Janes). 

In 2022, Bathanti published Light at the Seam, a poetry collection that reflects the Appalachian region’s environmental and cultural landscapes. The collection was awarded the Roanoke-Chowan Award as well as the Brockman-Campbell Award. Bathanti’s contributions to public and professional organizations are many and include: the Creative Aging Network of North Carolina Advisory Council, the Benevolence Farm Advisory Council, and the Appalachian Veterans Arts and Humanities Collective. In 2024, he was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.