WINTHROP — Author Brock Clarke of Portland will appear at the Bailey Public Library in Winthrop on Tuesday, Jan. 11. Clarke will speak at 6:30 p.m. about his book “Exley,” both a profound take on the Iraq War and a charming story about a child’s relationship with his parents.

Kirkus Book Reviews chose the book as one of the best of 2010 and NPR hailed the book as “extraordinary.”

A professor at Bowdoin College, Clarke is the author of five books, most recently “Exley” and “An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England,” which was a national best-seller and has appeared in a dozen foreign editions.

Clarke’s stories and essays have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, OneStory, The Believer, the Georgia Review and the Southern Review, and have appeared in the annual Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South anthologies and on NPR’s “Selected Shorts.”

Admission is free. For more information, call 377-8673