Novelist Carolyn Chute to read

Best-selling novelist and National Book Award winner Carolyn Chute will read from her newest book and discuss her political views and other matters on Wednesday, Oct. 2.

Chute, author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine and Letourneau’s Used Auto Parts, will read from her work-in-progress, The School on Hearts Content Road, at 7:30 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. The public is invited to attend at no charge.

In addition to the reading, which she is calling There’s No Love in Paradise, Chute reports she will “talk about stuff.”

In addition to her literary endeavors, Chute is active in the Second Maine Militia, an organization which seeks to redress what it sees as an imbalance in power between “haves” and “have-nots.”

After the publication of several short stories in the early 1980s, Chute attracted widespread attention with the 1985 appearance of The Beans of Egypt, Maine, which drew critical acclaim for its unflinching portrait of poverty in small-town Maine.

Her subsequent novels were Letourneau’s Used Auto Parts (1988) and Merry Men (1994).

Chute was recently named by George magazine as “one of the 20 most important women in American politics.”

She is the winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Thornton Wilder Fellowship.

Chute’s visit to Bates is sponsored by the college’s Department of English.