Fiction writer Michael Byers to read his works at Penn State Behrend September 16, 2010

Fiction writer Michael Byers will open the 2010-11 Creative Writer’s Speaker Series at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, on Thursday, September 16.

Byers will read from his new and published works at 6:00 p.m. in the college’s Larry and Kathryn Smith Chapel. A reception for Byers will take place in the chapel’s first-floor meeting room one-half hour before the reading. Both events are free and open to the public.

The Coast of Good Intentions, Byers’ 1998 story collection, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and won the Sue Kaufman Prize for first fiction given by the Academy of American Arts and Letters. His novel Long for This World won the First Novel Award from Virginia Commonwealth University; both were New York Times Notable Books. His newest novel is Percival’s Planet.

Byers’ stories have been selected for both The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Awards. A former Stegner Fellow and Whiting Award winner, he teaches at the University of Michigan.

Penn State Behrend’s annual Creative Writer’s Speaker Series is produced by the college’s B.F.A. in Creative Writing degree program with support from the Clarence A. and Eugenie Baumann Smith Fund. The series also will host poet Nin Andrews on Thursday, September 30, and literary nonfiction writer Steven Rinella on Thursday, October 14.

For more information about the series, phone the Penn State Behrend School of Humanities and Social Sciences at 814-898-6108.