Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford reads from his work at 8 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 13, in Chase Hall Lounge, Campus Avenue, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College.

The public is invited to attend the event, part of the Writers Harvest, the annual literary benefit to fight hunger and poverty sponsored by the national hunger organization Share Our Strength (SOS). Donations will be accepted and proceeds will benefit area food banks.

A native of Jackson, Miss., and a resident of East Boothbay, Ford is the author of eight books of fiction — five novels and three collections of stories, plus many essays. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and writes on cultural matters for La Repubblica.

Ford’s novel “Independence Day” (Knopf) won the 1996 Pulitzer Price for fiction, and his stories have won the PEN-Malamud Prize for distinguished contributions to the short story. New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani called Ford “one of his generation’s most eloquent voices.”

Each fall, Writers Harvest invites writers to fight hunger and poverty by reading from their works at bookstores, college campuses and community centers around the country. SOS distributes 100 percent of event donations to statewide anti-hunger and anti-poverty efforts. Since its inception in 1992, SOS’s Writers Harvest has raised more than $800,000 for the fight against hunger.

Ford’s reading is sponsored by the Department of English.

The annual Writers Harvest reading at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College will be given by Cleopatra Mathis, professor of English at Dartmouth College and author of five collections of poetry, at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 10, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

The public is invited to attend the event, part of the Writers Harvest, an annual literary benefit sponsored by the national organization Share Our Strength to fight hunger and poverty. Donations will benefit the Lewiston-Auburn Food Pantry and the Food Pantry at Trinity Jubilee Center, Trinity Episcopal Church, both in Lewiston, and Good Shepherd Food-Bank, Auburn.

A native of Louisiana, Mathis’ work has appeared in anthologies, textbooks, magazines and journals including The New Yorker and American Poetry Review. She has received two National Endowment for the Arts grants, the Peter Lavin Award for Younger Poets from the Academy of American Poets, the Robert Frost Prize and the May Sarton Award.

Her most recent book of poems, What to Tip the Boatman? (Sheep Meadow Press, 2001) won the Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry. Her sixth volume, White Sea, will be published by Sarabande Books in 2005.

Mathis directs the creative writing program at Dartmouth.

The public is invited to attend the event, part of the Writers Harvest, the annual literary benefit to fight hunger and poverty sponsored by the national hunger organization (SOS). Donations will be accepted and proceeds will benefit the Good Shepherd Food-Bank, Auburn; the Lewiston-Auburn Food Pantry, Lewiston; and the Food Pantry at Trinity Jubilee Center, Trinity Episcopal Church, Lewiston.

New York Times reviewer Louis Menand called Hall’s book Life Work (Houghton Mifflin, 1993) “the best new book I have read this year, of extraordinary nobility and wisdom. It will remain with me always.” Awarded the New England book award for nonfiction, the poems examine Hall’s life as a writer. He lives in Danbury, N.H.

The author of 15 poetry books, Hall published Without: Poems (1998), about the death of his wife, Jane Kenyon, from leukemia, and subsequently, The Painted Bed (2002), an exploration of grief and life after death: “You think that their dying is the worst thing that could happen. Then they stay dead.”

A native of New Haven, Conn., Hall published his first poem at age 16. He received his B.A. from Harvard and a B. Litt from Oxford. He has written short stories and plays, and books about baseball, the sculptor Henry Moore and the poet Marianne Moore. Hall is the author of various children’s books, including Ox-Cart Man (1979), which won the Caldecott Award. He has also written. He has edited various poetry anthologies, including The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse in America (1990) and The Oxford Book of American Literary Anecdotes (1981) and served as poetry editor of The Paris Review from 1958 to 1964.

Hall received the National Books Critic Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in poetry and a Pulitzer Prize nomination for The One Day (1988). The Happy Man (1986) won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and Exiles and Marriages (1955) was the Academy of American Poets Lamont Poetry Selection for 1956. The poet laureate of New Hampshire from 1984 to 1989, Hall’s other honors include two Guggenheim fellowships, the Poetry Society of America’s Robert Frost Silver Medal and the Ruth Lily Prize for poetry.

Each fall, Writers Harvest invites writers to fight hunger and poverty by reading from their works at bookstores, college campuses and community centers around the country. SOS distributes 100 percent of event donations to statewide anti-hunger and anti-poverty efforts. Since its inception in 1992, SOS’s Writers Harvest has raised more than $800,000 for the fight against hunger.

New York Times reviewer Rand Richards Cooper wrote “what makes Russo a supremely enjoyable novelist is the big swing he takes at small-town America: His sprawling novels keep large ensemble casts in play, making room for the hopes and delusions of even the most minor characters.”

Russo’s most recent publication is The Whore’s Child and Other Stories (Knopf, 2002). His novels include Mohawk (Random House, 1994), The Risk Poo, (Random House, 1994), Straight Man (Knopf, 1998) and Nobody’s Fool (Random House, 1997), which was made into a movie starring Paul Newman and Bruce Willis.  Publisher’s Weekly called Empire Falls Russo’s “biggest, boldest novel yet,” in which the author “subjects a full cross-section of a crumbling Maine mill town to piercing, compassionate scrutiny, capturing misfits, malefactors and misguided honest citizens alike in the steady beam of his prose.”

A native of Gloversville, N.Y., Russo is an alumnus of the University of Arizona Creative Writing Program and has taught at the University of Southern Illinois, the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and Colby College. His many screenplays include Nobody’s Fool and Twilight.

Each fall, Writers Harvest invites writers to fight hunger and poverty by reading from their works at bookstores, college campuses and community centers around the country. SOS distributes 100 percent of event donations to statewide anti-hunger and anti-poverty efforts. Since its inception in 1992, SOS’s Writers Harvest has raised more than $800,000 for the fight against hunger.

Combining political activism with a notable career as a writer and teacher, Sanchez teaches at Temple University and is widely known for her performances as a reader. She is the author of many books of poetry, including I’ve Been a Woman: New & Selected Poems (1981) and homegirls and handgrenades (1984).

Each fall, Writers Harvest brings together more than 2,000 writers to fight hunger and poverty by reading from their works in more than 600 bookstores, college campuses and community centers around the country. SOS distributes 100 percent of event donations to statewide anti-hunger and anti-poverty efforts.

SOS works to alleviate and prevent hunger and poverty in the United States and around the world. Since its founding in 1984, the organization has contributed more than $45 million in grants to more than 1,000 anti-hunger and anti-poverty agencies.