FARMINGTON — The University of Maine at Farmington will welcome award-winning writer Justin Tussing as the next author in its 2011-12 Visiting Writers Series on Thursday, March 15.

Tussing will read from his work at 7:30 p.m. in The Landing in the UMF Olsen Student Center. The free reading will be followed by a book signing.

Tussing’s debut novel, “The Best People in the World,” was awarded the 2006 Ken Kesey Award for the Novel and was described in a New York Times review as “one bright book of exuberant American life.”

In 2005, Tussin was among the writers selected to be showcased in The New Yorker’s annual Debut Fiction issue. His first published stories are “The Artificial Cloud,” published in TriQuarterly, and “The Tiny Man,” published in Third Coast, bothin the spring 2000.

Tussing has taught literature and creative writing at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., and is a full-time English professor at the University of Southern Maine.