FARMINGTON -—The University of Maine at Farmington’s Visiting Writers Series will be hosting a reading with author Jaed Coffin. Coffin will be reading from his work at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 27, in The Landing in the Olsen Student Center. Sponsored by the UMF Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program, the series events are free and open to the public.

Coffin is the author of “Roughhouse Friday” (FSG), a memoir about the year he won the middleweight title of a barroom boxing show in Juneau, Alaska. According to a starred review by Publishers Weekly, “In measured, lucid prose, Coffin writes of fight night scenes and of the insecurity of angry young men. . .This is a powerful, wonderfully written exploration of one’s sense of manhood.”

He’s also the author of “A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants” (Da Capo), which chronicles the summer he spent as a Buddhist monk in his mother’s village in Thailand.

A regular contributor to Down East Magazine, Coffin’s essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times, Nautilus, The Sun, and he’s been a storyteller for the Moth Radio Hour and TEDxPortsmouth.

He teaches creative writing at the University of New Hampshire and lives in Maine with his wife and two daughters.