Win Bassett knows more about beer than anyone else at the Yale Divinity School. Though almost every sentence in history contains some ambiguity, we’re pretty certain about that opener: Bassett’s beer biography includes writing for All About Beer, Beer West Magazine, and Beer Advocate–as well as stints as executive director of the North Carolina Brewers Guild and secretary of the American Guild of Beer Writers. The man knows from alpha acids and myrcene oil, and can wax about an ale’s “green onion spiciness” and “garlicky twang.” But he’s hardly all about the beer. Back to the Yale Divinity School thing–for Bassett, that’s just piling on the education. He’s already a lawyer. And that’s after magna cum laude performances in pursuit of dual bachelor’s degrees in electrical and computer engineering. Win Bassett can make you a beer, wire your business, and prosecute your enemy (he’s a former Assistant District Attorney.)
But it’s as a writer where Bassett shines. He’s published essays in The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Guernica (oh, is that a good one) and too many other excellent places to count–on subjects from Osip Mandelstam to Beck to death (hey, he’s a divinity school student–it’s a big topic). There’s poetry, too. In one particularly moving and representative piece for The Roanoke Times, Bassett quotes Walker Percy’s assertion that “Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe every possibility is open to him.” Yet it seems Win Bassett must believe just that. Or perhaps his seemingly peripatetic path is more straightforward than it looks, grounded simply in faith and family (as he hopes; see essay) and of a piece with humble purpose, not voracious appetite. At the pivot points, at least, the Win Bassett life seems quite orderly in its procession: it was all that effective prosecution of criminals that led Bassett to Yale, where his work is focused on prison ministry. Putting people in prison, he discovered he’d rather keep them out. Provide them new wells of opportunity. Beer (be’er), by the way, is the Hebrew word for well. @winbassett
