An award-winning and critically acclaimed author will read from her works at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5, in the Robinson Reading Room of West Virginia Universitys Charles C. Wise Jr. Library.

Sara Pritchard, whose reading is sponsored by the Department of English, won the 2002 Katharine Bakeless Nason Literary Publication Prize in Fiction for her first novel, Crackpots.

Under the pseudonym Delta B. Horne, she has also penned stories and essays for Arts&Letters, Bellingham Review, Chattahoochee Review, Literal Latt, Mid-American Review, Northwest Review and other publications.

The New York Times Book Review has called Pritchards writingdazzlingIn the middle of tragedy she makes you laugh out loud.Ursula Hegi, author of Stones from the River and a 2002 Bakeless judge, writes,Sara Pritchard has a gift for creating complex and believable characters. By choosing pivotal moments in their lives that are masked as normal but are actually odd, she takes us right up against the edge and challenges us to contemplate our own oddness.

Pritchard, who lives in Morgantown, is completing a master of fine arts degree in creative writing at WVU . She is a freelance writer and editor.

A reception and book-signing will follow the reading, which is free and open to the public. For more information, call 293-3107 ext. 404.