Guest Author Appearance at St. Andrews College
Author Joseph Bathanti will be in Laurinburg on Sept. 17-18 as part of the freshmen summer reading program at St. Andrews Presbyterian College. Area readers are now reading his critically acclaimed book “The High Heart.” Bathanti is a former faculty member at St. Andrews and is the recipient of numerous honors, among them the Linda Flowers Prize, the Sara Henderson Hay Prize, and the Sherwood Anderson Award.
Laurinburg, NC, September 16, 2008 --(PR.com)-- Author Joseph Bathanti will be in Laurinburg on Sept. 17-18 as part of the freshmen summer reading program at St. Andrews Presbyterian College. Area readers are now reading his critically acclaimed book “The High Heart”.
A limited number of free copies of the book are available to the community at The Daily Grind, Shirt Tales, and Rebound Book Exchange.
Bathanti is a former faculty member at St. Andrews.
Two sessions for members of the community are scheduled. Bathanti will first appear at a reception hosted at Scotia Village in the Morgan Room at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday. Readers of his book can engage him in an informal conversation.
Bathanti’s more formal presentation about his book will be Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the Morris Morgan Theatre on the St. Andrews campus.
Both events are free to the public.
Winner of the 2006 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction, the stories in “The High Heart” are linked through some heartbreakingly vivid characters headed by the young Fritz Sweeny and his volatile and eccentric parents. The setting is Pittsburgh in the sixties and seventies, when the city still lay in the trough of industrial collapse. Through the painfully honest perplexity of Fritz, readers are given a clear view of the family, the neighborhood, the city, and the era.
The Community Reading Program provides a common text for students, parents and community members that will be read, studied, discussed, debated and written about in classrooms, dorm rooms, family rooms, and library reading rooms throughout the area.
“The College hopes this effort will foster a larger sense of community built around the intellectually stimulating activities of reading, writing and open discussion,” said Professor David Herr, director of Quest I and associate professor of History. “This effort will also draw patrons to the College and public libraries while emphasizing the life-long pleasures of reading.”
Bathanti grew up in Pittsburgh and arrived in North Carolina in 1976 as a VISTA volunteer in the state’s prison system. He is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which, “This Metal”, was nominated for the National Book Award, as well as two novels, “East Liberty” and “Coventry”, for which he received the 2006 Novello Literary Award.
“More than anything, I feel honored,” said Bathanti, “not only that the book garnered this kind of attention, but that St. Andrews, a college that I not only taught at for a year, but a place that I hold in great esteem as one of the last outposts of what a true liberal education embodies, was the college that chose ‘The High Heart’.”
The recipient of numerous other honors, among them the Linda Flowers Prize, the Sara Henderson Hay Prize, and the Sherwood Anderson Award, he teaches creative writing at Appalachian State University.
“Every year, members of the St. Andrews faculty consider a variety of sources for the summer reading,” said Herr. “This year ‘The High Heart’ offers an exciting opportunity for the College as we invite area readers to join our summer reading program.”
The summer reading becomes part of general education coursework when the first-year students begin their fall classes. Entering classes in recent years have read Tim Tyson’s “Blood Done Sign My Name”, Kaye Gibbons’ “Ellen Foster”, Bill McKibben’s “Enough”, Gregory Maguire’s “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West”, and Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi”.
For more information, go to the St. Andrews website at http://www.sapc.edu/academics/quest/summerreading.php or call Gary Greene, Communications Director, 277-5671.
About St. Andrews Presbyterian College
St. Andrews Presbyterian College is a four-year liberal arts and sciences college situated on 600 acres around a 70-acre lake in the Sandhills region of North Carolina. Long known for its innovation and academic excellence, the college boasts an unparalleled interdisciplinary curriculum, a study abroad program on three continents, a multidisciplinary science lab the size of an indoor arena, the first undergraduate college press in the country, the first four-year degree in therapeutic horsemanship and equine business management, and an award-winning bagpipe band. Students enrolled at St. Andrews come from 42 states and eleven countries.
Further information may be obtained by visiting the College's website www.sapc.edu or calling admissions at 800-763-0198 sending an e-mail to admissions@sapc.edu.
In early 2008 St. Andrews Presbyterian College initiated a partnership with The Learning House, Inc., a total online education solutions provider, to assist in the development and launch of its online campus. Learning House will provide a customized package of online services, including a learning management system for eCourses, Tier 1 hosting and Help Desk services, custom course consultation, online marketing services, faculty and staff training, and consulting services.
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A limited number of free copies of the book are available to the community at The Daily Grind, Shirt Tales, and Rebound Book Exchange.
Bathanti is a former faculty member at St. Andrews.
Two sessions for members of the community are scheduled. Bathanti will first appear at a reception hosted at Scotia Village in the Morgan Room at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday. Readers of his book can engage him in an informal conversation.
Bathanti’s more formal presentation about his book will be Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the Morris Morgan Theatre on the St. Andrews campus.
Both events are free to the public.
Winner of the 2006 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction, the stories in “The High Heart” are linked through some heartbreakingly vivid characters headed by the young Fritz Sweeny and his volatile and eccentric parents. The setting is Pittsburgh in the sixties and seventies, when the city still lay in the trough of industrial collapse. Through the painfully honest perplexity of Fritz, readers are given a clear view of the family, the neighborhood, the city, and the era.
The Community Reading Program provides a common text for students, parents and community members that will be read, studied, discussed, debated and written about in classrooms, dorm rooms, family rooms, and library reading rooms throughout the area.
“The College hopes this effort will foster a larger sense of community built around the intellectually stimulating activities of reading, writing and open discussion,” said Professor David Herr, director of Quest I and associate professor of History. “This effort will also draw patrons to the College and public libraries while emphasizing the life-long pleasures of reading.”
Bathanti grew up in Pittsburgh and arrived in North Carolina in 1976 as a VISTA volunteer in the state’s prison system. He is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which, “This Metal”, was nominated for the National Book Award, as well as two novels, “East Liberty” and “Coventry”, for which he received the 2006 Novello Literary Award.
“More than anything, I feel honored,” said Bathanti, “not only that the book garnered this kind of attention, but that St. Andrews, a college that I not only taught at for a year, but a place that I hold in great esteem as one of the last outposts of what a true liberal education embodies, was the college that chose ‘The High Heart’.”
The recipient of numerous other honors, among them the Linda Flowers Prize, the Sara Henderson Hay Prize, and the Sherwood Anderson Award, he teaches creative writing at Appalachian State University.
“Every year, members of the St. Andrews faculty consider a variety of sources for the summer reading,” said Herr. “This year ‘The High Heart’ offers an exciting opportunity for the College as we invite area readers to join our summer reading program.”
The summer reading becomes part of general education coursework when the first-year students begin their fall classes. Entering classes in recent years have read Tim Tyson’s “Blood Done Sign My Name”, Kaye Gibbons’ “Ellen Foster”, Bill McKibben’s “Enough”, Gregory Maguire’s “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West”, and Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi”.
For more information, go to the St. Andrews website at http://www.sapc.edu/academics/quest/summerreading.php or call Gary Greene, Communications Director, 277-5671.
About St. Andrews Presbyterian College
St. Andrews Presbyterian College is a four-year liberal arts and sciences college situated on 600 acres around a 70-acre lake in the Sandhills region of North Carolina. Long known for its innovation and academic excellence, the college boasts an unparalleled interdisciplinary curriculum, a study abroad program on three continents, a multidisciplinary science lab the size of an indoor arena, the first undergraduate college press in the country, the first four-year degree in therapeutic horsemanship and equine business management, and an award-winning bagpipe band. Students enrolled at St. Andrews come from 42 states and eleven countries.
Further information may be obtained by visiting the College's website www.sapc.edu or calling admissions at 800-763-0198 sending an e-mail to admissions@sapc.edu.
In early 2008 St. Andrews Presbyterian College initiated a partnership with The Learning House, Inc., a total online education solutions provider, to assist in the development and launch of its online campus. Learning House will provide a customized package of online services, including a learning management system for eCourses, Tier 1 hosting and Help Desk services, custom course consultation, online marketing services, faculty and staff training, and consulting services.
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Erica Berger
502-589-9878
www.elearnportal.com/sapc
502-589-9878
www.elearnportal.com/sapc
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