Joe Pagetta is a communications professional and writer who began his career at the Jersey Journal in his hometown of Jersey City, New Jersey. He holds a B.A. in English from Saint Peter’s University, and has called Nashville, Tennessee home for more than 25 years. As a personal essayist and arts writer, his writing has appeared in America: The Jesuit Review, Ambassador Magazine (the National Italian American Foundation), Today’s American Catholic, Chapter 16 (Humanities Tennessee), Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Tennessee Home & Farm, Ovunque Siamo, Wordpeace, Nashville Scene and PBS.org.

Currently serving as the director of communications at the Tennessee State Museum, his resume includes positions at Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), Nashville Public Television (PBS), Nashville Film Festival and NowPlayingNashville (The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee). He was named the Best PR Guy in Nashville by the late Jim Ridley in the 2009 Nashville Scene Best of Nashville writers poll, and received a 2021 Nashville Scene Best of Nashville Writers Award for his work co-producing and directing the podcast, The Passion of Ethel Rosenberg (a Radio Play). In 2024, he was selected to attend the Robert Penn Warren Place of Memory Workshop for Middle Tennessee Public Historians at Vanderbilt University and invited to be a writer-in-residence at the Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow.

He is currently working on a book for Vanderbilt University Press on Fr. Aloysius Orengo and the early Catholic Church in Middle Tennessee. Recent published writings are posted below. For a more extensive list, please visit the Selected Writings Portfolio page. Thanks for visiting!