The Black Mountain Institute (BMI) at UNLV presents the following events as part of its Readings & Panels Series. Distinguished speakers and writers from across the nation who specialize in literature, politics and social issues are part of this season's thought-provoking lecture series. Events are subject to change. Please check the Black Mountain Institute Web site for updated event information or call (702) 895-5542. All events are free and open to the public. Directions to UNLV and campus locations may be found on the campus maps web page.

Reading: Emerging Writers Series featuring Melinda Moustakis

Date/Time: Tuesday Sept. 11, at 7 p.m.

Location: UNLV Greenspun Hall Auditorium

Description: Melinda Moustakis is the author of "Bear Down Bear North," her first book published by University of Georgia Press in 2011. It won the Flannery O' Connor Award and the Maurice Prize and has been shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Co-sponsored by Nevada Humanities.

BMI Open House and "A Night in the Operating Room: A Cutting Edge Discussion on Medical Ethics"

Date/Time: Wednesday, Sept. 19, Open House at 6 p.m., panel at 7 p.m.

Location: UNLV Student Union Ballroom

Description: Harriet Washington, medical ethicist and author of "Deadly Monopolies," joins David Ewing Duncan, chief correspondent of National Public Radio's Biotech Nation and director of the Center for Life Science at UC Berkeley, and moderator Jacob Appel, a bioethicist, social critic, short story writer, and a practicing physician in New York City. The panelists will discuss ethics, politics, and morality, in present day American medicine. Co-sponsored by the Kagi Foundation: A Lynn M. Bennett Legacy.

Reading: James Longenbach

Date/Time: Thursday, Oct. 18, at 3:30 p.m.

Location: Flamingo Hotel & Casino Conference Center, Mesquite Room, 2^nd Floor

Description: James Longenbach is a poet, critic, and the Joseph Henry Gilmore Professor of English at the University of Rochester, where he teaches courses on American poetry, British and American modernism, James Joyce, Shakespeare, and creative writing. His critical works include "Modernist Poetics of History," "Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism," "Wallace Stevens: the Plain Sense of Things," and his most recent"The Art of the Poetic Line," which explores the "function of line in metered, rhymed, syllabic, and free-verse poetry." He will be introduced by UNLV English Professor Donald Revell. In partnership with the Modernist Studies Association.

Vegas Valley Book Festival Opening Keynote Reading with Jennifer Egan

Date/Time: Saturday, Nov. 3, at 3:30 p.m.

Location: Fifth Street School, 401 S. Fourth St., Las Vegas, NV 89101

Description: Jennifer Egan is the author of "The Invisible Circus," which was released as a feature film by Fine Line. She is the author of "Look at Me," a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction, and "Emerald City and Other Stories," and "The Keep," which was a national bestseller. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, Granta, McSweeney's and other magazines. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Her most recent novel, "A Visit From the Goon Squad," won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the LA Times Book Prize.

Co-sponsored by City of Las Vegas, Nevada Humanities, Las Vegas-Clark County Library District and Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Reading: Emerging Writers Series, featuring Peter Covino

Date/Time: Tuesday, Nov. 27, at 7 p.m.

Location: UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum

Description: As a former professional social worker who has worked in the fields of foster care, AIDS services, and youth and family services, and as an Italian immigrant, poet, translator, and essayist Peter Covino's creative writing and research interests continue to be strongly influenced by the interrelationship of ethnic culture, work in translation, and psychosocial identity. Covino is the author of "Straight Boyfriend," winner of the 2001 Frank O'Hara Chapbook Prize. In 2007, Covino was awarded the PEN/Joyce Osterweil for "Cut Off the Ears of Winter." Co-sponsored by Nevada Humanities.

Founded in 2006, Black Mountain Institute (BMI) at UNLV is an international center dedicated to advancing literary and cross-cultural dialogue. Through public programs, residential fellowships, and publishing initiatives, Black Mountain provides a cultural lens through which today's most pressing issues can be addressed and evaluated.