Tom Piazza, known both as a fiction writer and as a music writer, will give a reading at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 12, in the Wells-Brown Room of Rush Rhees Library on the University of Rochester's River Campus. This reading is part of The Plutzik Series and is co-sponsored by the Office of the Vice President and General Secretary. It is free and open to the public.

Born on Long Island, New York, Piazza graduated from Williams College, where he earned his bachelor's degree. He is also a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. A resident of New Orleans, Piazza lost his home during Hurricane Katrina and is traveling around the country giving readings.

Piazza's 1995 book The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Music Writing. Other recognitions went to his 1996 short-story collection Blues and Trouble, which won the James Michener Award for Fiction, and his 1999 book True Adventures with the King of Bluegrass, a finalist for the Ralph J. Gleason Award.

The Plutzik Series is one of the country's oldest and most prestigious literary reading programs. Established to honor the work of Hyam Plutzik, a distinguished poet and Deane Professor of Poetry and Rhetoric at the University, it has featured more than 175 noted writers, including Pulitzer Prize winners Anthony Hecht, Elizabeth Bishop, and Galway Kinnell. The Plutzik Series is administered by the Department of English. For more information, contact (585) 275-4092.