SELINSGROVE, Pa. - A Latino writer who Kirkus Reviews says "is fast becoming recognized as a powerful and important new talent in American fiction" will give a reading Wednesday, March 29, at 7:30 p.m. in Susquehanna University's Degenstein Center Theater.

Dagoberto Gilb is the author of two award-winning books-a short-story collection and a novel. Gilb's short-story collection, "The Magic of Blood," won the 1994 Ernest Hemingway Foundation award and his novel, "The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuņa," was named a "Notable Book of the Year" by the New York Times Book Review.

Gilb, former recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, writes from his experience as a construction worker and journeyman high-rise carpenter in the 1970s and 1980s. He details the life of a Mexican-American working-class citizen.

Commentary in Kirkus Reviews said that "The Magic of Blood" was "a lovely, heartbreaking, finely crafted collection of stories about the poor and working-class in America's Southwest."

Gilb's work has been widely anthologized, and he is a contributor to National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" program. He teaches in the Master of Fine Arts program at Southwest Texas State University in El Paso and has been a visiting writer at the universities of Texas, Arizona, and Wyoming.

The reading is free and open to the public and is partially sponsored by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

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