Image: Bathanti reading to an audience at Appalachian State University for the exhibition: Kirsten Stolle, Monsanto Intervention series, Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, 2015. Photo by Marie Freeman.
Reception + Conversation with Joseph Bathanti
Friday, July 19, 2024, 3:00-4:00pm
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center {120 College Street}
Free and Open to All
Join us for an afternoon reception honoring Joseph Bathanti, former poet laureate of North Carolina, honoree of the 2024 NC Writers Conference, and 2024 inductee into the NC Literary Hall of Fame. Bathanti, in conversation with Alex Albright, will offer remarks about Black Mountain College, including his personal connections to Fielding Dawson and Alma Stone Williams, the BMC issue of the Appalachian Journal, and the BMC issue of the NC Literary Review.
Joseph Bathanti is former Poet Laureate of North Carolina (2012-14) and recipient of the 2016 North Carolina Award for Literature. He is the author of ten books of poetry and winner of numerous awards including the Roanoke-Chowan Award, Carolina Novel Award, Novello Literary Award, Spokane Prize, Will D. Campbell Award for Creative Nonfiction, and The Order of the Long Leaf Pine. Bathanti is Professor of Creative Writing at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. He is Professor of English & McFarlane Family Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Education and Writer-in-Residence of Watauga Residential College, as well as affiliate faculty in Appalachian Studies & The Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies. He is the recipient of Appalachian State’s 100 Scholars Research Award, 2009; the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity, 2021; the Donald W. Sink Family Outstanding Scholar Award for 2020-21; and The Board of Governors Appalachian State University Excellence in Teaching Award, 2022. He served as the 2016 Charles George VA Medical Center Writer-in-Residence in Asheville, NC, and is the co-founder of the Medical Center’s Creative Writing Program.
WATCH: Russell Williams and Joseph Bathanti – A Conversation About Alma Stone Williams
In this video Dr. Russell Williams Jr. joins Joseph Bathanti for a conversation about Alma Stone Williams’ extraordinary life and her place in the history of our country’s struggle for civil rights.