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 Books, 2001) along with a book of short stories, The High Heart (Eastern Washington University Press, 2007).

While at A&T, he will meet with faculty and students, conduct a writing program for A&T students interested in poetry and spoken word, and read from his work at 7 p.m. followed by light refreshments and book signing. The reading, which is open to the public, will be in the auditorium of the new Academic Classroom Building. (If you've been on a college campus lately, you know how parking can be - this is easy, with a surface lot and parking garage close by, accessed off East Market Street).

Bathanti’s visit comes right at the beginning of National Poetry Month. It's sponsored by the N.C. A&T Honors Program, F.D. Bluford Library, NCA&T Department of English and Creative Writing @ A&T, and the Center for Academic Success.Our friends at UNCG's MFA Program are also supporters in this event, as we at A&T are supporting a visit there the next day by poet A. Van Jordan.

See you April 3!