The McNeese State University Master of Fine Arts program will present fiction writer Ron Carlson in a free reading at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 10, in the Business Conference Center.

Carlson, a professor of English at Arizona State University, is the author of eight novels and short story collections, including “The Speed of Light,” “A Kind of Flying” and “At the Jim Bridger.” His short stories have appeared in Esquire, Harpers, The New Yorker, Gentlemen’s Quarterly, Epoch, The North American Review and other journals, such as the Best American Short Stories, O’Henry Prize Series, Pushcart Prize Anthology and the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. He has been warded the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, the Cohen Prize at Ploughshares and a National Society of Arts and Letters Literature Award.