LEWISTON — Brooklyn-based playwright Ethan Lipton has added a question-and-answer session to his Friday, Oct. 1, visit to Bates College.

Myriad aspects of the creative life, from the business of creativity to the specifics of writing lyrics versus spoken lines, are likely to be discussed at 4:15 p.m. in Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

A playwright whose work has been produced in Los Angeles, New York and Edinburgh, Lipton is also a singer-songwriter whose three-man band provides spare arrangements that range through the stylebook of American music.

Lipton and His Orchestra will perform at 7:30 p.m. that day in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall.

The Q&A is open to the public at no cost. Concert tickets, $10, are available at www.batestickets.com. For more information, contact 786-6135 or [email protected].

On Sunday, Oct. 3, Naomi Shelton and The Gospel Queens will perform in the concert hall at 7:30 p.m. The Bates Gospelaires, a student ensemble, will open.

Also based in Brooklyn and known for a long and vibrant career in New York soul clubs, Shelton grew up singing with her sisters in their Alabama church. “What people really hear from us is the gospel sound, but with the nightclub beat,” Shelton told The Village Voice.

Shelton’s band includes her musical director of more than three decades, bandleader and keyboardist Cliff Driver, and former James Brown bassist Fred Thomas.

Tickets for the Oct. 3 concert are $15 and $8.