LEWISTON — The writings of Lewiston author Mark LaFlamme will be the focus of a Halloween-themed literary event Thursday, Oct. 29, at the public library.

Dubbed “Readings from the Crypt, and Beyond…,” the program will feature a cast of Maine thespians presenting selections from several of LaFlamme’s works, including both his published novels and various short stories, essays and other musings which have yet to make it into print.

Open to the public free of charge, the program will take place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in Callahan Hall, on the library’s third floor.
Though LaFlamme’s day job is as a reporter for the Lewiston Sun Journal, where he has been covering the crime beat since 1994, his avocation as a fiction writer began at age 6, when he penned a story about a child-eating pit that existed — he fantasized — in the woods behind his house.

He has produced countless other short stories and essays since then, and, in 2004, came out with his first novel, “Worumbo,” the tale of a young reporter with blossoming psychic abilities who, while exploring an abandoned Maine mill, stumbles upon government experiments involving mind control. A year later, LaFlamme wrote and published “The Pink Room,” about a physicist who attempts to use the science of string theory to bring his daughter back from the dead.

In 2007, LaFlamme published “Vegetation,” the tale of a man at war with the world of plants, which was followed last year with “Dirt: An American Campaign,” a political novel which he describes as a determined, but failed, attempt to break out of the horror writer mold, as the story opens with a grave robbing in the dead of the night.

It is this scene which inspired the theme and title of the upcoming program at the library, according to LPL cultural coordinator Cindy Larock. “We have been wanting to bring Mark here for some time,” she said, pointing not only to his rising success as a novelist but to his popularity with local residents for his witty and sardonic Sun Journal column, “Street Talk.”

This column has earned him multiple citations as top news columnist from media groups in both Maine and New England, and, in 2006, LaFlamme was named Journalist of the Year by the Maine Press Association.
Halloween is his favorite time of the year, says LaFlamme, so much so that it is his habit to take the week preceding Halloween off from work to pursue exploits which in past years have included “ghouling around Edgar Allan Poe’s grave in Baltimore, spending a night in Sleepy Hollow and hanging out in Salem.”
LaFlamme says that he plans to prepare for “Readings from the Crypt, and Beyond…” by sleeping in a coffin in his basement until showtime.

The library is at 200 Lisbon St. For more information, call Larock at 513-3050.