Northwest Missouri State University’s Department of Language, Literature and Writing hosts fiction writer Ron Austin and poet Caroline Chavatel to begin the 2019-20 Visiting Writers Series at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 17, in the J.W. Jones Student Union Tower View Dining Room.

The event is free and open to the public. Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corporation, GreenTower Press, and the Department of Language, Literature and Writing are sponsors of the series.

Austin’s collection of linked stories, “Avery Colt Is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar,” won the 2017 Nilsen Prize. His short stories have been placed in Pleiades, Story Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Black Warrior Review and other journals. His work also has garnered a 2016 Regional Arts Commission Fellowship and a special mention in the 2015 Pushcart Prize Anthology. As co-director of the River Styx Reading Series, he shares local and national literary talent.

Chavatel is the author of “White Noises,” published this year by GreenTower Press, which won The Laurel Review’s 2018 Midwest Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in Sixth Finch, AGNI Online, Gulf Coast and The Journal. She is an editor at Madhouse Press and co-founding editor of The Shore.

The Visiting Writers Series is designed to promote creativity, diversity, and freedom of expression as a living and meaningful art form that provides its audience with a better understanding of people and the world.

The series continues with Heather Harpham on Nov. 19, Kathryn Nuernberger on March 17, and Matthew Cooperman and Aby Kaupang on April 23.

For more information about the Visiting Writers Series, contact Daniel Biegelson, a Northwest English instructor, at dbiegel@nwmissouri.edu or 660.562.1266.