Award-winning Fresno author Steve Yarbrough will kick off “First Friday” events at 1 p.m. on Sept. 7 at the Henry Madden Library at California State University, Fresno.

Yarbrough, who holds an endowed professorship in English at Fresno State, will speak in Library Conference Room 1209 about his new novel, “Visible Spirits,” set in the Mississippi Delta in 1902.

First Friday events are scheduled throughout the fall as part of the Madden Library’s celebration of the acquisition of its one-millionth volume. Additional events will be held Oct. 5, Nov. 2 and Dec. 7.

Yarbrough, who joined the faculty in 1988, has received several awards in recent years, including the California Book Award from the Commonwealth Club of California in 2000 and the John and Renee Grisham Visiting Southern Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi in 1999-2000.

After establishing a national reputation as a short-story writer, Yarbrough published his first novel, “The Oxygen Man” in 1999. His second, “Visible Spirits” was released in May by Alfred A. Knopf. Yarbrough is working on his third novel, whose working title is “A Year to Forget.” It is set in 1943 and revolves around a German prisoner of war camp in Mississippi.