Fiction writer Wendy Rawlings to read at Mississippi State

Contact: Maridith Geuder

A widely recognized Alabama fiction writer will read from her works April 5 at Mississippi State University.

The public program featuring Wendy M. Rawlings, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama, begins at 7 p.m. in the Colvard Union small auditorium. Rawlings is the latest guest in the MSU English department's 2001-02 Visiting Writers Series.

Rawlings' short stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Colorado Review and Bellingham Review, among other publications. Her short story collection, "Come Back Irish," was published in December by Ohio State University Press, which awarded her its Sandstone Prize for short fiction.

She also has been named the Lauren Husted Scholar of the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, which is sponsored annually by Middlebury (Vt.) College. Additionally, she has received writing fellowships from the MacDowell Colony at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and from Yaddo, an artists' community in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

A member of the U.A. English department faculty, Rawlings specializes in short fiction by women, form and theory of fiction, narrative voice in the American short story, and the comic novel.

For more information about the reading, telephone the English department at (662) 325-3644.