Bestselling author Jennifer Haigh will serve as the Mary Jane Schafer Distinguished Speaker.

She will present a lecture, which is free and open to the public, on Tuesday, April 15, at 8:00 p.m. in McVitty Auditorium in Sprowls Hall. Free parking is available next door in the university's parking garage.

Haigh is the author of the critically acclaimed Mrs. Kimble, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award for outstanding first fiction. Born and raised in Barnesboro, Pa., she is a graduate of Dickinson College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in Good Housekeeping, the Hartford Courant, Alaska Quarterly Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Her most recent book, Baker Towers, is a New York Times bestseller.

Her appearance is made possible through the Mary Jane Schafer Distinguished Speaker Series and is sponsored by IUP Libraries.

A reception will follow the lecture.