Words Awake 2!

Joseph Bathanti’s work reflects his life. Raised in a close-knit, blue-collar community of Catholic immigrants in Pittsburgh, he attended parochial school and lived near his parents and other relatives until he was 23. In the 1970s, he first ventured out of Pennsylvania to work as a VISTA volunteer with prison inmates in North Carolina. He met his wife-to-be on his first day of training and has since continued to live and work in North Carolina. Bathanti previously served as North Carolina’s seventh poet laureate. He is a professor of creative writing at Appalachian State University.