FARMINGTON – The University of Maine at Farmington’s Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program will present fiction writer and essayist Steve Almond as the sixth reader in its Visiting Writers Series.

Almond will read from his work at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 5, in Thomas Auditorium, UMF Ricker Hall. The reading is free and open to the public, and the author will be available after the reading for book signing.

Almond is the author of the short story collections, “My Life in Heavy Metal” (Grove Atlantic, 2002) and “The Evil B. B. Chow and Other Stories” (Algonquin, 2005); the memoir, “Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America” (Algonquin, 2004); and the epistolary novel, “Which Brings Me to You” (Algonquin, 2006), co-authored by Julianna Baggot.

His work has appeared in journals and magazines such as The Missouri Review, Story Quarterly, New England Review, Playboy and McSweeney’s, among many other places. Almond lives outside Boston where he is at work on a new collection of essays, “Not That You Asked,” due out from Random House in September.

For more information, contact UMF Assistant Professor Jeffrey Thomson, Dept. of Creative Writing, at 778-7454, or [email protected].