LEWISTON – Novelist Miriam Colwell will visit Bates College to read from and discuss her latest book at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 10, in the college’s Museum of Art.

The event is free and open to the public.

Colwell’s first novel in more than five decades, “Contentment Cove” (Islandport Press, 2007) is a story of class distinctions in a Maine coastal village in the 1950s, a time of cultural change.

The late Burton Hatlen, a University of Maine professor and National Poetry Foundation director, called the novel “nasty, funny, witty, biting, perceptive.” The themes recall “The Great Gatsby,” he added, “and the whole issue of class in America. Miriam has a definite eye to class gradations within that community.”

Born in 1917 in Prospect Harbor, Colwell has depicted small-town Maine with authority. She was the lifelong companion of artist and author Chenoweth Hall. The two were central to Maine’s Modernist community, maintaining something of a salon at their Prospect Harbor home with such figures as photographer Berenice Abbott and painter Marsden Hartley. Colwell credits Hall as the greatest influence on her writing.

Colwell also authored 1945’s “Wind Off the Water,” 1947’s “Day of the Trumpet” and 1955’s “Young,” novels that earned her significant attention at the time

The museum of art is at 75 Russell St. For more information, call 786-6158.