The department will hold its second Writers Read program of fall semester 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11 in Martin Chapel of the seminary building.

New York Times best-selling novelist and award-winning poet Robert Morgan will read from his writings at the dinner meeting.

One of Morgan’s best-known works, “Gap Creek,” was selected for the Southern Book Critics Circle award for fiction, 2000, and chosen as a “notable book” by the New York Times. It was also an Oprah Book Club selection and named “Book of the Year” for 2000 by the Appalachian Writers Association.

His fiction includes “The Mountains Won’t Remember Us,” “The Balm of Gilead Tree: New and Selected Stories” and “The Truest Pleasure,” listed by “Publisher’s Weekly” as one of the most notable books of 1995.

Morgan has received several NEA grants and Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships and was given the James G. Hanes Poetry Prize by the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

The author’s most recent works include a novel, “Brave Enemies,” and “The Strange Attractor: New and Selected Poems.”

Morgan is currently Kappa Alpha professor of English at Cornell University.

Admission to the program, which includes dinner, is $10. Students with I.D. will be admitted for $5. Advance reservations should be made by noon, Nov. 5, by calling the 91¶ÌÊÓƵ box office at 540-432-4582.