Reading in a Language Arts Live presentation in October 2012, novelist Sarah Braunstein lives in Portland, Maine.

The Language Arts Live series of literary readings presents Sarah Braunstein, author of the acclaimed novel The Sweet Relief of Missing Children, and Richard Blanco, prizewinning poet.

Braunstein reads from her work at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 24, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave. Blanco reads at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 8, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Admission for both events is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6256. The Language Arts Live series of literary readings is sponsored by the English department at Bates and the John Tagliabue Poetry Fund.

The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (Norton, 2011) spins the stories of three young people into a suspenseful novel about the power of running and the desire for reinvention. O, The Oprah Magazine called it “enthralling . . . a page-turner in which the plot is secondary to the brilliant, visceral portrayal of its characters.”

Braunstein, of Portland, received a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award in 2007 and in 2010 was named one of “5 Under 35″ fiction writers by the National Book Foundation. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Green Mountain Review, Ploughshares and Maine Magazine, and on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”

Braunstein also co-wrote a play, String Theory: Three Greek Myths Woven Together, which was produced in New York City in 2009 and at Vassar College in 2010. She teaches at the Stanford University Online Writer’s Studio, in the low-residency MFA program at the University of Southern Maine and at Colby College.

Poet Richard Blanco of Bethel, Maine. Photo by Nico Tucci.

Blanco was conceived in Cuba and born in Spain. His family then immigrated to the U.S., first to New York City and then Miami, where he was raised.

His first book of poetry, City of a Hundred Fires (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998) explores the yearnings and negotiations of cultural identity as a Cuban American. Directions to the Beach of the Dead (2005) continues this exploration of the themes of cultural identity and homecoming.

A third collection, Looking for The Gulf Motel, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press early in 2012.

Blanco’s poems have appeared in top literary journals including The Nation, The New Republic, Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly Review and TriQuarterly Review. He is represented in such anthologies as The Best American Poetry, Great American Prose Poems, The Breadloaf Anthology of New American Poets and American Poetry: The Next Generation. He has been featured on “All Things Considered.”