A visit by a dear friend - for National Poetry Month!
It's always great to have a good friend come to visit. Joseph Bathanti, award-winning poet, professor and advocate for literacy - and a dear friend and fellow Press 53 author - will visit North Carolina A&T State University for workshops and a reading on Wednesday, April 3. Bathanti was named North Carolina’s Poet Laureate in 2012 by then-Gov. Bev Perdue, who noted his “robust commitment to social causes.” He first came to North Carolina to work in the VISTA program and has taught writing workshops in prisons for 35 years. North Carolina’s seventh poet laureate, Bathanti is a professor of creative writing at Appalachian State University where he is also Director of Writing in the Field and Writer-in-Residence in the University's Watauga Global Community. He is the author of several books of poetry, including This Metal (St. Andrews College Press, 1996 and Press 53, 2012), two novels, Coventry (Novello Festival Press, 2006) and East Liberty (Banks Channel