March 9th, 2009

FARMINGTON, ME (March 9, 2009)--The University of Maine at Farmington's
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program is proud to announce
award-winning fiction writer Elizabeth Strout as the second evening reader
in its spring 2009 Visiting Writers Series. The reading will be held at
7:30 p.m., Thursday, March 19, in The Landing in the UMF Olsen Student
Center. It is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a
signing by the author.

A native Maine author, Strout has won a number of meaningful literary
awards. Her most recent work, "Olive Kitteridge," has been nominated for
the National Book Critics Circle Award and is a national bestseller. She is
the author of two previous novels, "Abide With Me," also a national
bestseller; and "Amy and Isabelle," which won the Los Angeles Times Award
for First Fiction, The Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize, and was
short-listed for The PEN/Faulkner Award, as well as The Orange Prize in
England.

Her stories have appeared in a number of magazines, including The New
Yorker, and also in Best American Mystery Stories.

She is on the faculty of the MFA Program at Queens College in Charlotte,
N.C., and makes her home in New York City.

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For more information regarding this event, please contact Jeffrey Thomson,
UMF associate professor of creative writing, at 207-778-7454, or at
jeffrey.thomson@maine.edu.

EDITOR'S NOTE: You will find photo at
http://www.umf.maine.edu/campus/docs/RP089-038.jpg

Photo Credit: Miriam Berkeley