Author and Charleston native Margaret Bradham Thornton will visit campus on Sept. 4, 2014, to read from her debut novel “Charleston.”

Margaret Bradham Thornton

Margaret Bradham Thornton

The reading will take place at 7 p.m. in Alumni Hall, located on the second floor of Randolph Hall. A book signing and reception will follow. The event is free and open to the public.

Thornton is the editor of Tennessee Williams’s “Notebooks,” for which she received the Bronze ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award for Autobiography/Memoir and the C. Hugh Holman Prize for the best volume of southern literary scholarship, given by the Society for the Study of Southern Literature.

The reading was organized by Emily Rosko, assistant professor of English and creative writing coordinator.

RELATED: Read a Q&A with Margaret Bradham Thornton.

Charleston-jacket-cover-embedRosko says she invited Thornton to the College after meeting her at a launch reception for the book, which was published by HarperCollins in July 2014.

“The book is lovely, especially for how it describes Charleston and its environs,” says Rosko. “And even for all the reading that I do, I was delighted to be able to know exactly the places (and flora) that she describes in the novel and was also thrilled that one of the minor characters attended the College of Charleston.”

Rosko says Thornton is a terrific model for the College’s English students because she is accomplished as both a scholar and creative writer.

Thornton’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Paris Review, World Literature Today, The Seattle Review, Theatre History Studies, and The Times Literary Supplement. She is a graduate of Princeton University and currently resides in Florida.