The University of Maine at Farmington’s Visiting Writers Series is set to present award-winning graphic memoirist and sequential artist Tom Hart as the program’s fourth reader of the season.

Hart will read from his work at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 2, in The Landing in the UMF Olsen Student Center on South Street. The reading, free and open to the public, will be followed by a book signing with the author, according to a news release from the university.

Hart’s graphic memoir “Rosalie Lightening” is about the untimely death of his young daughter, Rosalie, and the slow journey through grief as Hart and his wife try to make sense of their tragedy.

“Rosalie Lightening” was listed The Washington Post’s Best Graphic Novel of 2016 and one of Publishers Weekly’s 100 Best Books of 2016. The Kirkus Review calls the book, “A bracing, deeply saddening journey into death and loss whose wryly affirmative resolution, ‘joy breaking through the storm clouds,’ is nothing but hard won.”

Hart is an Eisner Award-nominated comic artist and the recipient of a Xeric Foundation Grant. His work has been featured in the Metro Newspaper in New York and Boston and featured in Time Magazine.

Hart is an educator and is executive director of the Sequential Artists Workshop in Gainesville, Florida. His newest work includes “The RMP Guide to Graphic Literature” and “B. Is Dying.”

“Rosalie Lightening” is available at the UMF University Store and at Devany, Doak and Garret Booksellers.

The Visiting Writer Series is sponsored by the UMF Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program.

For more information, contact Amy Neswald, UMF professor of creative writing, at 207-778-8024, or [email protected].

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