January 24, 2003 SELINSGROVE, (Pa.) - The Spring Reading Series of Susquehanna University's Writers' Institute opens on Monday, Feb. 3, with a reading by writing faculty Thomas Bailey, Gary Fincke, and Karen Holmberg. Each professor will be reading from his or her own work at 7:30 p.m. in the Shearer Dining Rooms of Degenstein Campus Center. The reading is free and open to the public. Author of A Short Story Writer's Companion and the editor of On Writing Short Stories, Tom Bailey is also a recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship for Fiction. Most recently, Bailey completed a novel titled The Grace that Keeps this World. Bailey currently teaches fiction and creative non-fiction at Susquehanna. Gary Fincke has published 13 books of poetry and short fiction, most recently Blood Ties, The Almanac for Desire, and Emergency Calls. Winner of the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry Magazine and the Rose Lefcowitz Prize from Poet Lore, Fincke has received a PEN Syndicated Fiction Prize as well as six fellowships for creative writing from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Director of the Susquehanna University Writers' Institute, Fincke is currently completing a book on the rock-n-roll life of his son, Aaron, and the band, Breaking Benjamin. Karen Holmberg was the recipient of the 1996 Discovery/Nation Award, and two-time winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her book, The Perseids, won the 2000 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry. Holmberg teaches poetry and oversees the development of the institute's Editing and Publishing Center. Contact: Victoria Kidd 570-372-4119 #vk/2655#