Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of "American Salvage" and a finalist for both the 2009 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, will be visiting writer-in-residence at the University of St. Thomas March 7-11.

Campbell will visit classes and give a free, public reading at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 8, in O'Shaughnessy Educational Center auditorium on the university's campus in St. Paul. Campbell lives in Kalamazoo, Mich., and has won a Pushcart Prize and a Eudora Welty Prize. Her stories have appeared in Kenyon Review, Southern Review and Ontario Review.

Also ...

• "Casa Marina," poems by Candace Black, has won the Thomas A. Wilhelmus Award from RopeWalk Press, an imprint of the University of Southern Indiana. Black's first collection, "The Volunteer," was a Minnesota Voices prize-winner from New Rivers Press. She teaches creative writing at Minnesota State University in Mankato.

• Kristin Swenson, originally from Duluth, has written "Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time," published by HarperCollins. The book explains how the Bible has permeated so many aspects of popular culture. Swenson will read and sign books at 4 p.m. Friday at the University of Minnesota Bookstore, 300 Washington Av. SE. Swenson is a professor of religious studies in Virginia.

• The public is invited to a reception celebrating the work of Chip Schilling, winner of the Minnesota Book Awards' 2010 book artist award. The reception begins at 5:30 p.m. Friday, with a program at 6:30 p.m., at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts at Open Book, 1011 Washington Av. S., Mpls. Schilling's work will be exhibited at Open Book through March 21.

• "City of Cannibals," a first novel for young adults by Ricki Thompson of Minneapolis, has been published by Front Street/Boyd Mills Press. Thompson will read and autograph books at 7 p.m. March 18 at Barnes & Noble Galleria, 3225 W. 69th St., Edina.

• "A Book of Ages," by Eric Hanson of Minneapolis, is out in paperback from Three Rivers Press. The book lists famous people's achievements, by chronological age. The amazing feats of people in their 20s and 30s are a wee bit humbling, but I take solace in the entries for the later years. Galileo, for instance, was 77 when he invented the clock pendulum. There's still time for you and me.