BOONE, N.C. — Appalachian State University professor and former North Carolina Poet Laureate (2012-14) Joseph Bathanti has been named to this year's class of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame (NCLHOF) — an honor reserved for five of the state's most beloved and accomplished writers.
Established in 1996 under the leadership of Poet Laureate Sam Ragan, the NCLHOF is a program of the North Carolina Writers’ Network. The program celebrates and promotes the state’s rich literary heritage by commemorating its leading authors and encouraging the continued flourishing of great literature. The Hall of Fame is located at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities in Southern Pines.
Since 2008, the network and the Weymouth Center have collaborated with the North Carolina Center for the Book, the North Carolina Humanities Council and the North Carolina Collection of the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to produce the induction ceremony and to promote the NCLHOF and North Carolina’s literary heritage. Bathanti — along with groundbreaking essayist and educator Anna Julia Cooper, bestselling novelist Kaye Gibbons, poet and professor Lenard Moore, and Appalachian bard Ron Rash — will be inducted into the hall during a special ceremony on Oct. 6 at the Weymouth Center.
“This prestigious award, which rightly places Professor Bathanti in the company of esteemed North Carolina writers such as Maya Angelou, Carl Sandburg, Reynolds Price and Lee Smith, attests to Joseph’s lifelong passion for and commitment to the art of writing,” stated Dr. Maria Pramaggiore, chair of App State’s Department of Interdisciplinary Studies. “His legacy as a writer and a teacher is reflected not only in his many, many, award-winning works of poetry, prose, nonfiction and essay, but also in the writing undertaken by hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of students of all ages and walks of life who learned to write their stories from him in every kind of setting imaginable, from the university classroom to the VA center to the local coffee shop.”
About Joseph Bathanti
Bathanti is App State’s inaugural McFarlane Family Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Education and serves as the writer-in-residence in Watauga Residential College in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies. He is also professor of creative writing in App State’s Department of English. Additionally, he is a mentor in the Master of Fine Arts program at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Bathanti served as the writer-in-residence at the Charles George Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Asheville in 2016, and is the co-founder of the Medical Center’s creative writing program.
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Bathanti holds bachelor's and master's degrees in English literature from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as a master of fine arts in creative writing from Warren Wilson College. He is the author of over 20 books spanning multiple genres, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction and personal essays.
Bathanti is the three-time recipient of the Roanoke Chowan Award — given annually by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association for the best book of poetry published by a North Carolina poet in a given year — most recently for his 2022 volume, “Light at the Seam,” from LSU Press. His most recent book of fiction, “The Act of Contrition & Other Stories,” from EastOver Press, in 2023, is the winner of the Eastover Prize for Fiction. He is the recipient of the Mary Frances Hobson Prize, awarded annually by Chowan University to recognize distinguished achievement in the field of arts and letters; the Irene Blair Honeycutt Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts, presented annually by Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte; as well as the Lee Smith Award, awarded annually to recognize an individual who has worked to preserve and promote Appalachian culture.
Bathanti came to North Carolina as a Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) volunteer in 1976 to work with prison inmates, and has remained active in prison outreach and education ever since. He served seven years as humanities chair at Mitchell Community College before joining the faculty at App State in 2001. Today, Bathanti teaches a sequence of courses exploring local and global issues — “Investigations: Local” and “Investigations: Global” — as well as a special topics course for aspiring writers titled “Watauga Writers Workshop.” Bathanti has received many awards recognizing his excellence in teaching and scholarship, including the App State Provost’s Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity in 2021; the College of Arts and Sciences Donald W. Sink Family Outstanding Scholar Award in 2021; and the Board of Governors Appalachian State University Excellence in Teaching Award in 2022.
Bathanti's co-edited volume, “The Anthology of Black Mountain College Poetry,” will appear from UNC Press in late 2024. Also forthcoming this year is “Sempre Fidele & Other Poems,” a bilingual edition of Bathanti’s Italian American Pittsburgh poems translated into Italian by Marina Morbiducci and Darcy DiMona. Bathanti's novella, “The Stranger,” is forthcoming in 2025.
