LEWISTON, Maine — Samantha Hunt, who wrote a novel about the inventor Nikola Tesla, and "Two Kinds of Decay" author Sarah Manguso are among the writers reading from and discussing their work in a Bates College literary series during March.

The yearlong Language Arts Live series at Bates presents nationally renowned writers. The series is sponsored by the English department, the programs in environmental studies and Asian studies, the Bates Humanities Fund, Bates OUTfront and the John Tagliabue Poetry Fund. All events are open to the public at no cost, and take place in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave.

The series presents poet and Farmington resident Jeffrey Thomson at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 5. His four poetry collections include "Birdwatching in Wartime" (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2009), "Renovation" (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2005) and "Country of Lost Sons" (Parlor, 2004).

Thomson received a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2008 Fellowship in the Literary Arts from the Maine Arts Commission. He is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Maine at Farmington.

Not to be confused with the musician, poet Ravi Shankar reads from his work at 4:15 p.m. Monday, March 9. Poet in residence and assistant professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, Shankar is the author of "Instrumentality," a collection of poems published in 2004 by Cherry Grove Collections.

Shankar is a founding editor of the online arts journal "Drunken Boat." Among awards won by Shankar's poems are the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize and the Bennett Prize for Poetry at Columbia University. He reviews poetry for the Contemporary Poetry Review and, with poets Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, co-edited "Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond" (W.W. Norton & Co., 2008).

Samantha Hunt, who spent four years researching inventor Nikola Tesla for her novel "The Invention of Everything Else" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008), reads from her work at 4:15 p.m. Monday, March 16. The novel portrays encounters between an aged and eccentric Tesla, spending his last weeks of life in a Manhattan hotel, and a hotel chambermaid.

Hunt's "vision of punch-drunk, teetering-on-modernity Manhattan dazzles in the details," wrote a reviewer in The New Yorker — "a vast hotel with its own hospital and ice-skating rink; a Poverty Ball attended by millionaires in rags."

Hunt's first novel is the widely acclaimed "The Seas" (Picador, 2005) and her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney's and on the radio program "This American Life." She received the first "5 under 35" award from the National Book Foundation. Hunt lives in New York City.

Sarah Manguso, author of the memoir "The Two Kinds of Decay" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), reads from her prose at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 19. The memoir describes Manguso's affliction as a college student with a debilitating auto-immune disease (now in remission).

"Contrary to the usual cliché, illness did not make Manguso a better person," wrote a reviewer in The Boston Globe. "It made her a more thoughtful, self-aware person. In simple, unsentimental language, she describes her initial symptoms, her sudden attacks, her treatments, her suicidal depression, and her progress as a patient and, incidentally, as a person."

Manguso's other books include the short-story collection "Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape" (McSweeney's, 2007), and the poetry collections "Siste Viator" (Four Way Books, 2006) and "The Captain Lands in Paradise" (Alice James Books, 2002). Her writings and criticism have appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The New Republic and The Boston Review. She received a Pushcart Prize and the Rome Prize in Literature for 2007-08.