Hi, I'm Beth Casteel

I graduated from Penn State University in 1987 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and honors in music; from West Virginia University in 1992 with a master’s degree in communication studies; and from Carlow University in 2024 with a Master in Fine Arts in creative nonfiction.

 During my time in the MFA, I completed a manuscript about the bittersweetness of adoptive mothering and  a series of essays about people and places along the National Road Heritage Corridor in southwestern Pennsylvania.

My creative writing has appeared in Dappled Things, the Carlow Anthology, and Northern Appalachia Review.

I have worked as: a newspaper reporter and editor, a college instructor at Penn State Fayette Campus and Carlow,  and a church organist for over 40 years. I have volunteered in numerous capacities at my church and in the community. 

Taking the Holy Eucharist to the homebound and to those in the nursing home has changed me. It is the place and time where people who are sick, hurting, broken, and despairing meet the compassion of Jesus face to face and I am privileged to witness that.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus.”
Hebrews 12:1

“I am a little pencil in God’s hands. He does the thinking. He does the writing. He does everything and sometimes it is really hard because it is a broken pencil and He has to sharpen it a little more.”
Mother Teresa, The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living

“I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a storyteller.”
G.K. Chesterton

“Let not your heart be disturbed… Am I not here, who is your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within my fold? What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by anything.”
Our Lady of Guadalupe