FARMINGTON — The University of Maine at Farmington will present Alexander Chee as the next writer in its 2010-11 Visiting Writers Series. He will read from his work at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, March 24, in The Landing in the UMF Olsen Student Center.

The reading, free and open to the public, will be followed by a book signing.

Chee’s first novel “Edinburgh,” won the Michener Copernicus Prize, the AAWW Lit Award and the Lambda Editor’s Choice Prize. It was also a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year and a Booksense 76 selection. He is working on his second novel, “The Queen of the Night.”

Chee was considered one of Out magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year in 2003. His work has been published in Out, The Man I Might Become, Loss Within Loss, Men On Men 2000, His 3, Boys Like Us and on Granta.com. He received the 2003 Whiting Writers’ Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in Fiction and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Ledig House, the Hermitage and Civitella Ranieri.

He lives in New York City and has taught both fiction and nonfiction at the New School University, Wesleyan and Amherst College. This spring, he will teach fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.