The Seminary Explores

Poet Shaheen Dil speaks with Katy Giebenhain about what sparked the writing of her verse memoir. Dil was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She now lives in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Her poetry collections include Acts of Deference, The Boat-Maker’s Art, and, most recently, Letters to My Younger Self. Her BA in English is from Vassar College. She holds a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in International Relations from Princeton University. Dil’s career started in academia, then shifted to banking and consulting. All along she’s been writing poetry. But for many years that was her secret. Luckily, we are now able to read her poems in journals and books, and to hear her at public readings.

A downloadable transcript was generated using otter.AI.

Writer and community advocate Will Lane joins Katy Giebenhain for a conversation about the questions we ask ourselves in complex times, especially in a place like Gettysburg.  

Lane is the author of 5 poetry collections: Moonlight Standing in as Cordelia, Elegy for Virginia Redding, In the Barn of God, Trust Rust, and Kin. As an undergraduate he studied Classical Greek at Gettysburg College. For over a decade he worked in the building trade before earning an MA from the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. He taught for many years in the English and Environmental Studies Department at Gettysburg College. Lane currently serves on the St. James Lutheran Church Council and is integral to Adams County organizations such as the long-running Green Gettysburg Book Club and Democracy for America (DFA). One of the founders of the Interfaith Center for Peace and Justice and Project Gettysburg Leon (the town’s sister city in Nicaragua), he lives in Adams County with his wife and partner in Democracy, Anne.

A downloadable transcript was generated using otter.AI.

NOTE (2026-08-10 14:49): We discovered an error in the uploaded file and have uploaded a corrected version. The transcript may have a gap in the transcription and will be updated once we are able to do so.

NOTE (2026-08-12 11:42): Transcript file has been updated.

The poems in Marianne Worthington’s The Girl Singer tap into music performance, audiences, family identity and cultural expectations from many directions. She joins Katy Giebenhain for a conversation about the book. Marianne’s work has appeared in Oxford American, The Louisville Review, Appalachian Review, Untelling, New Southerner, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Salvation South and elsewhere. A graduate of Carson-Newman University and Ball State University, she is co-editor, with Silas House, of Piano in a Sycamore: Writing Lessons from the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. This is a craft anthology from teachers at the renowned Workshop in Hindman, Kentucky from its first 40 years. She co-founded and was the poetry editor for the journal Still. Marianne is the author of the chapbook Larger Bodies than Mine. The Girl Singer received the Weatherford Award for Poetry from Berea College and The Appalachian Studies Association.

You can visit Marianne's website at: https://marianneworthington.com/

Photo Credit: Dereck Hammers

Author Joseph Bathanti (LSU Press, Mercer University Press)  details the writing program, Brothers and Sisters Like These, he and Dr. Bruce Kelly started at the Charles George Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Asheville, North Carolina. 

Bathanti is a creative writing mentor for Carlow University’s MFA program. He is Professor of English at Appalachian State University, serving as the McFarlane Family Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Education, as an affiliate faculty appointment in Appalachian Studies & The Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies, and as the Writer-in-Residence of Watauga Residential College. The author of many books including The Act of Contrition (short stories, 2023), he is a co-editor of The Anthology of Black Mountain College Poetry, which is forthcoming from University of North Carolina Press.

Joseph Bathanti grew up in Pittsburgh. He came to North Carolina in the mid-1970s as a VISTA volunteer to work with prison inmates. His degrees are from University of Pittsburgh and Warren Wilson College. He is a former poet laureate of North Carolina.

Watch the Brothers Like These film.

Nicole Yurcaba joins Katy Giebenhain for a conversation about identity, assumptions, and Ukrainian writers to start reading right now. A Ukrainian-American Poet and Essayist, Nicole’s book reviews, poems, and essays have appeared in The Atlanta Review, Whiskey Island, Raven Chronicles, Appalachian Heritage, North of Oxford, The Southern Review of Books and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University. She has been a Writing Resident at Gullkistan Creative Center for the Arts in Iceland, and a Tupelo Press June 2020 “30 for 30 featured poet.” Her poetry collection Triskaidekaphobia is forthcoming this year from the Black Spring Press Group. She teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University and works as a career counselor for Blue Ridge Community College. She lives in West Virginia.

Links mentioned in the interview:

• Black Springs Press Group
• Lost Horse Press  
• Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
• Ukrainian Festival

A Conversation with Poet Faith Shearin on the Eve of All Saints’ Day.

Poet Faith Shearin has received awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and elsewhere. Her poems have been featured on The Writers Almanac and American Life in Poetry and have appeared in journals such as New Ohio Review, Nimrod International Journal, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review and The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary Poets. Her most recent collection is Lost Language. She grew up on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. She now lives in Massachusetts. 

Poetry, Theology, and Art from North Wales via a Special R.S. Thomas Festival

Susan Fogarty, director of the R.S. Thomas & M.E. Eldridge Festival in Aberdaron, shares highlights of the upcoming Festival with The Seminary Explores. Both the poet-priest and the artist were prolific, wise, talented and steeped in rural realities. First held in 2014, the Festival has featured distinguished speakers including Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. The 2021 Festival will be held live online in association with Church Times on June 19.

View a virtual exhibit of the "Dance of Life" mural. Also see the Millennium Center text in Welsh and English from Gwyneth Lewis.

Mark S. Burrows joins The Seminary Explores to talk about his recent teaching on wonder and its significance in a pandemic – with some Mary Oliver and Rachel Carson in the mix. Burrows has taught at graduate theological schools in the U.S. and Europe, most recently The Protestant University of Applied Sciences in Bochum, Germany. His Ph.D. and M.Div. are from Princeton Theological Seminary. An historian of medieval Christianity, his research and writing have focused on those creative minds among the mystics, visionaries, and poets who often found themselves living and working at the margins of Christianity.

West Virginia Poet Laureate Marc Harshman joins Katy Giebenhain for a conversation about writing and reading and the iconic influences on both from Falling Water and the Asphodel Bookshop. Harshman holds degrees from Bethany College, Yale Divinity School, and the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of 14 children’s books including The Storm, a Smithsonian Notable Book, and eight collections of poetry including his latest, Woman in Red Anorak, Lynx House Press/University of Washington. He is, most recently, co-winner of the 2019 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award.

Many thanks to our host site for this interview, Waldo’s and Co. on the Square in Gettysburg and Facebook

Carla Christopher, a student at United Lutheran Seminary and a former Poet Laureate of York, Pennsylvania, talks about how we can have difficult conversations around challenging topics by creating a safe space where people can engage with one another and feel safe to be human. Conversations about race, diversity, and a gender can be difficult, but there are resources available to help any group or organization, no matter how small, to begin to share their life experiences with one another.

Learn more about Carla at carlachristopher.com and communityartsink.org.