FARMINGTON — The University of Maine at Farmington will present award-winning author Lily King as the next writer in its 2011-12 Visiting Writers Series.

She will read from her work at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17, in The Landing at UMF’s Olsen Student Center. The reading is free and open to the public. It will be followed by a book signing.

King is the author of “The Pleasing Hour,” “The English Teacher” and “Father of the Rain,” along with other short works. Her first novel, “The Pleasing Hour,” won the Barnes and Noble Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book and an alternate for the PEN/Hemingway Award.

“The English Teacher” was listed as one of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Books of the Year and won the Maine Fiction Award and a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year award. “Father of the Rain” won the New England Book Award for Fiction, New York Times Editors’ Choice and Amazon’s Best Books of the Month for July 2010. It was included on O Magazine’s 2010 summer reading list and was a 2011 Maine Literary Awards winner.

King’s short pieces have been featured in literary magazines such as Ploughshares and Glimmer Train.