Coastal Carolina University professor Jason Ockert will read from his recently released short story collection, "Neighbors of Nothing," on Wednesday, Nov. 13, at 7 p.m. in the James J. Johnson Auditorium. There will be a reception and book signing after the reading. The event is part of CCU's Words to Say It Visiting Writers Series and is free and open to the public.

Ockert is an associate professor at CCU and serves as fiction editor of the online literary journal Waccamaw. "Neighbors of Nothing," his second collection of short stories, was selected from approximately 300 contestants as winner of the international 2010 Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Contest. The 10 stories in the collection are linked by a common theme of absence or loss in the characters' lives.

Ockert's previous collection of short stories, "Rabbit Punches," was published in 2006. In addition to the Dzanc Short Story collection contest, he won the 1999 Atlantic Monthly Fiction Contest and the 2002 Mary Roberts Rinehart National Fiction Award. He was also nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. His short fiction has appeared in "New Stories from the South," "Best American Mystery Stories," Oxford American, storySouth, Ecotone, The Iowa Review, One Story, McSweeney's and Post Road. His forthcoming novel is about parasitic, brain-eating wasps.

The Words to Say It Visiting Writers Series brings critically acclaimed authors to CCU. Writers are selected both for their literary skill and their commitment to the socially transformative imagination.

The James J. Johnson Auditorium is in the E. Craig Wall Sr. College of Business Administration Building, located at 119 Chanticleer Drive E. in Conway. For more information, contact Dan Albergotti at 843-349-2420 or albergot@coastal.edu.