FARMINGTON — Award-winning author Lia Purpura is the next guest in the University of Maine at Farmington’s 2011-12 Visiting Writers Series. Purpura will read from her work at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct, 13, at The Landing in the UMF Olsen Student Center.

The reading is free and open to the public; it will be followed by a book-signing.

Purpura wrote “On Looking” (Sarabande Books, 2006), winner of the Towson University Award in Literature and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her works include “King Baby,” winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award; “Increase,” winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award; “Stone Sky Lifting,” winner of the OSU Press/The Journal Award; “The Brighter the Veil,” also a winner of the Towson University Award in Literature; and “Poems of Grzegorz Musical: Berliner Tagebuch and Taste of Ash.”

Her newest book of essays, “Rough Likeness,” is scheduled for release in January.

Purpura has been awarded an NEA Fellowship, three Pushcart Prizes, a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council and a Fulbright Fellowship.

Her work has been published in Agni Magazine, Double Take, Ecotone, Field, The Georgia Review, Orion, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Ploughshares and The Southern Review.

Purpura is a graduate of Oberlin College and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She is a writer in residence at Loyola University and also teaches in the MFA program at the Rainier Writing Workshop.