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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Author T. Geronimo Johnson will give a free public reading beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 5, in the Valley Library rotunda on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis. A question-and-answer session and book signing will follow.

Johnson is the author of "Hold it 'Til it Hurts," a PEN/Faulkner finalist. His most recent book, "Welcome to Braggsville," was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

"Welcome to Braggsville" is a provocative comedy about four liberal University of California, Berkeley students who stage a mock lynching during a Civil War reenactment. It was named one of the 10 books all Georgians should read by the Georgia Center for the Book, and was recommended by UC Berkeley as summer reading for incoming undergraduates.

The Washington Post hailed the book, describing it as: "The most dazzling, most unsettling, most oh-my-God-listen-up novel you'll read this year."

Johnson is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He is a founding and core faculty member in the OSU-Cascades low-residency creative writing program, teaching fiction. He also has taught writing at UC Berkeley, Stanford, Iowa Writers' Workshop, The Prague Summer Program, San Quentin and elsewhere. 

The reading is part of the 2015-16 Visiting Writers Series at Oregon State, which is sponsored by the MFA Program in Creative Writing with support from the OSU Libraries and Press; the OSU School of Writing, Literature, and Film; the College of Liberal Arts; Kathy Brisker and Tim Steele; and Grass Roots Books and Music.

The Valley Library is located at 201 S.W. Waldo Place, Corvallis.