LEWISTON – Samantha Hunt, who wrote a novel about the inventor Nikola Tesla, and “Two Kinds of Decay” author Sarah Manguso are among the writers who will from and discuss their work in a Bates College literary series during March.

The yearlong language arts live series at Bates presents nationally renowned writers. All events, which are open to the public at no cost, take place in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave.

Poet and Farmington resident Jeffrey Thomson is scheduled to appear at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 5. His poetry collections include “Birdwatching in Wartime,” “Renovation” and “Country of Lost Sons.” Thomson received a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2008 Fellowship in the Literary Arts from the Maine Arts Commission. He is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Maine at Farmington.

Award-winning poet Ravi Shankar (not to be confused with the legendary sitarist and composer of the same name) will read from his work at 4:15 p.m. Monday, March 9. Poet-in-residence and assistant professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, Shankar is the author of “Instrumentality,” a collection of poems published in 2004 by Cherry Grove Collections. He is a founding editor of the online arts journal “Drunken Boat.”

Samantha Hunt, who spent four years researching inventor Nikola Tesla for her novel “The Invention of Everything Else” will read from her work at 4:15 p.m. Monday, March 16. The novel portrays encounters between an aged and eccentric Tesla, spending his last weeks of life in a Manhattan hotel, and a hotel chambermaid. Hunt’s first novel is the widely acclaimed “The Seas” and her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s and on the radio program “This American Life.”

Sarah Manguso, author of the memoir “The Two Kinds of Decay” will read from her prose at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 19. The memoir describes Manguso’s affliction as a college student with a debilitating auto-immune disease (now in remission). “Contrary to the usual cliché, illness did not make Manguso a better person,” wrote a reviewer in The Boston Globe. “It made her a more thoughtful, self-aware person. In simple, unsentimental language, she describes her initial symptoms, her sudden attacks, her treatments, her suicidal depression and her progress as a patient and, incidentally, as a person.”

Manguso’s other books include the short-story collection “Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape” and the poetry collections “Siste Viator” and “The Captain Lands in Paradise.” She received a Pushcart Prize and the Rome Prize in Literature for 2007-08.

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