Who is Avellina?

Avellina Balestri

Author | Editor | Speaker | Musician | Historian

Profile

Avellina Balestri is a Catholic author, editor, speaker, narrator, songwriter, musician, and historian based in the scenic Pennsylvania-Maryland (Penn-Mar) borderlands, nearby the Gettysburg Battlefield and the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. Her Italian-American heritage is in synergy with her passion for spirituality and the arts.

Written Works

Avellina’s wide assortment of stories, poems, and essays have been featured in over thirty print and online publications including The Latin Mass Magazine, The Wisdom Daily, The St. Austin Review, and Catholic Insight. Her historical fiction novels, poetry collection, and anthologies are available for purchase on Amazon.

Achievements

Avellina is the Editor-in-Chief of Fellowship & Fairydust, a literary magazine dedicated to inspiring faith and creativity and exploring the arts through a spiritual lens. Under its auspices, she has hosted two interfaith conferences at Oxford University and at Cambridge University respectively. As an orator, she represented the state of Maryland at The Sons of the American Revolution National Orations Contest in Greenville, South Carolina. She has been a speaker at Theology on Tap events in Pennsylvania and been interviewed on over twenty podcast and YouTube channels. As a singer/songwriter, Avellina was a finalist in her community talent show, Hanover Has Talent, and has performed with the Celtic band Across the Pond.

Influences

Avellina has a special love of British Isles & Early American history, with a particular focus on the Middle Ages and the Long 18th Century. She also gravitates towards Arabesque history, culture, and languages. In keeping with this, she takes inspiration from folk and religious music from both east and west in her performances as a vocalist and musician. In addition to singing, she plays the penny whistle, bodhran drum, and autoharp, and maintains a YouTube channel featuring her performances. The music artists that have had the most influence on her style include Loreena McKennitt, Karliene, Maddy Prior, Heather Dale, Julie Fowlis, John Michael Talbot, and Sami Yusuf. Some of the literature that has most inspired her includes “The Ballad of the White Horse” by G.K. Chesterton, “Murder in the Cathedral” by T.S. Eliot, “Revelations of Divine Love” by Julian of Norwich, “Death on a Friday Afternoon” by John Richard Neuhaus, and “The Reed of God” by Caryll Houselander.”

Spirituality

Avellina views reality through the lens of the Christian mystical tradition, seeing the Trinitarian and Incarnational mysteries as being reflected in all things good, true, and beautiful. She believes that the image of God is wondrously woven into every human heart, and that gives her an abiding hope that all manner of things shall be made well and a deep reverence for universal human dignity, from womb to tomb. This also makes her dedicated to engaging in interreligious dialogue, especially between Christians and Muslims, the two largest world religions. These themes are at the forefront of the stories she chooses to tell.