Lincoln Memorial University (LMU) will continue its 2012-13 Appalachian Reading Series with writer Michael Knight on March 18.

Knight is the author of two novels, Divining Rod and The Typist, two collections of short stories, Dogfight and Other Stories and Goodnight, Nobody, and a collection of novellas, The Holiday Season.

His most recent novel, The Typist, was selected as a Best Book of the Year by The Huffington Post and The Kansas City Star, among other places. It was named as an Indie Next List Notable Selection and appeared on Oprah’s Summer Reading List in 2011 and as an Oprah Winfrey Book of the Week.

“Michael Knight is a brilliant fiction writer. His stories (long and short) give us these interesting characters wrestling with life in particularly revealing and defining moments,” said LMU Writer-In-Residence Darnell Arnoult. “His reputation as one of the South’s most skillful writers is well deserved. He had success at a very young age and I’m eager for my students to hear him talk about his experience.”

Knight is primarily known for his short fiction. In 1996, his story “Gerald’s Monkey,” won the prestigious Playboy Magazine College Fiction Contest. Since then, Knight’s short stories have appeared in magazines and journals like The New Yorker, Oxford American, Paris Review and The Southern Review and have been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories, 2004 and New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best 1999, 2003, 2004 and 2009.

Knight is a native of Mobile, Ala. He graduated from Hampden-Sydney College, an all-male private school in Southside, Va., before completing graduate degrees at The University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Virginia. Since 1999, he has taught at the University of Tennessee, where he now also directs the University’s creative writing program.

Knight will be the Appalachian Reading Series’ featured author at 7 p.m. on March 18, in the Arnold Auditorium of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum on the LMU main campus in Harrogate, Tenn. He will sign books after the reading. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Arnoult at darnell.arnoult@lmunet.edu or call 423-869-7074.

Lincoln Memorial University is a values-based learning community dedicated to providing educational experiences in the liberal arts and professional studies. The main campus is located in Harrogate, Tennessee. For more information about the undergraduate and graduate programs available at LMU, contact the Office of Admissions at 423-869-6280 or e-mail at admissions@lmunet.edu.