NORWAY – Norway Memorial Library will host writer Bill Roorbach, an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction, at a fireside chat Friday, Sept. 19. He will talk about his life and experiences as a writer in a relaxed setting beside the library’s candlelit fireplace beginning at 7 p.m.

Roorbach has taught at Colby College, Ohio State University and the University of Maine at Farmington. In 2004, he was awarded the Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross. His books include “Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey;” “Into Woods,” essays; “Summers with Juliet,” a memoir; and “A Place on Water,” essays which he wrote with Robert Kimber and Wesley McNair.

His “Big Bend,” a collection of short stories released in 2001, earned the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. The title story won the O. Henry Award in 2001. A year later, his novel, “The Smallest Color,” was published.

Roorbach has also written two books for writers of nonfiction: “Writing Life Stories: How to Make Memories into Memoirs” and “Ideas into Essays and Life into Literature and Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: The Art of Truth.”

His writing has appeared in the Atlantic, Harper’s, New York Times Magazine, Missouri Review and several other journals and magazines, and has been heard on NPR’s “Selected Shorts.”

The event is free and will conclude with light refreshments and time to visit with Roorbach. To learn more about the author, visit www.billroorbach.com. For more information, call the library at 743-5309.