Award-winning authors Victoria Chang and John C. Hampsey will read from their work at The Normal School Spring Reading event on Friday, Feb. 27 at Fresno State.

The evening features readings from each of the authors’ latest works, followed by a book signing. The Normal School Spring Reading is free and open to the public.

Chang recently won a PEN Center Literary Award and the California Book Award for her third collection of poems, “The Boss,” published by McSweeney’s. Her first book, “Circle,” received the Crab Orchard Review Open Competition award. Her second book, “Salvinia Molesta,” was a part of the VQR Poetry Series and published by the University of Georgia Press. Her widely praised poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, The Nation, The Washington Post, American Poetry Review and the Kenyon Review. She is a contributing editor of the literary journal Copper Nickel, and she edited the anthology “Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation.” Chang lives in Southern California.

Historian Howard Zinn hailed Hampsey’s most recent work, “Kaufman’s Hill: A Memoir,” as “the best book written on American boyhood in decades.” Hampsey, a professor of romantic and classical literature at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, received the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award. An excerpt from his upcoming work, “Soda Lake,” will be published in The Alaska Quarterly. More than 30 of Hampsey’s stories and essays have been published throughout his career, most notably in The Gettysburg Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Antioch Review, The Boston Globe, and McNeese Review. He lives in San Luis Obispo.

The reading and book signing will be held at 7 p.m. in the Alice Peters Auditorium (Peters Business building, Room 191) inside the University Business Center. Parking is free in suggested lots P5 and P6.

Founded in 2008, The Normal School is a nationally distributed literary magazine. Steven Church, the James and Coke Hallowell Professor of Creative Writing at Fresno State, is a founding editor. Graduate students from the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing serve as staff for the magazine. Visit The Normal School Online to subscribe. For information about the reading, contact Church at 559.908.3347.

(Master of Fine Arts Program graduate assistant Tricia Savelli contributed to this report.)