In addition, Martone will speak on coincidence and fate in fiction in a lecture titled "Homer on Homer or a Bunch of Stuff That Happens" at 8 p.m. Nov. 3.

Both talks — part of The Writing Program's fall Reading Series — are free and open to the public and will take place in Hurst Lounge, Duncker Hall, Room 201.

Martone is the author of several fiction and nonfiction collections, including the forthcoming Michael Martone, comprising "contributors notes" in which the author reinvents a character named Michael Martone 44 times; and Unconventions: Attempting the Art of Craft and the Craft of Art, a book of writings about writing.

Other books include The Blue Guide to Indiana (2001), Seeing Eye (1995), Pensees: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle (1994), Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler's List (1992), Safety Patrol (1988) and Alive and Dead in Indiana (1984).

His collection of essays about the Midwest, The Flatness and Other Landscapes, received the 1998 AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction.

He is the editor of several anthologies, including Extreme Fiction: Fabulists and Formalists (2003) and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction (2000).

"Michael Martone throws an exciting challenge at every reader, forcing us to grapple with our notions of what fiction is and how we perceive the whats, wheres, whens and whos of 'reality,'" notes David Schuman, coordinator of the Writing Program. "Realism, fabulism, nonfiction — no genre or form will contain this writer, so he shrugs off the constraints of each and forges something new."

Born in Fort Wayne, Ind., Martone graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English before attending The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

He teaches in the writing program at the University of Alabama and previously taught at Syracuse, Iowa State and Harvard universities.

For more information, call 935-7130.