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Carolyn Turgeon, a young adult/prose writer and author of five re-imaginings of fairy tales, will meet students on Thursday, Sept. 11, as the first guest in the 2014-2015 Visiting Writer Series sponsored by the Department of English and Mary Louise White Fund of the Fredonia College Foundation.

The author craft talk at 4 p.m. and reading at 7 p.m. will both be held at McEwen Hall Room 202.

A teacher in the University of Alaska Low-Residency M.F.A. program, Ms. Turgeon is the author of five novels: “Rain Village,” “Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story,” “Mermaid,” the middle-grade “The Next Full Moon,” and “The Fairest of Them All,” the most recent, published in 2013 by Simon & Schuster.“I love the combination of beauty and darkness you find in these old stories, and love taking a traditional tale and illuminating it in some new way. I also love the combination of gritty reality with gorgeous, lush fantasy,” Turgeon wrote on her website.

In “Mermaid,” Library Journal said “readers who love fairy tale retellings will find this fresh take difficult to put down.” Kirkus Reviews described the book as “a gothic love triangle with two equally matched heroines. This isn’t kid’s stuff.” Booklist found “Mermaid” to be “more robust than a fractured fairy tale,” and added, “Turgeon’s brooding retelling gives voice to both women, fleshing out an essentially tragic tale of destiny and desire … Guaranteed to keep you guessing who – if anyone – will live happily ever after.”

Turgeon earned a master’s in Comparative Literature from UCLA in 1998, an undergraduate degree from Penn State and worked several years as a writer and editor in New York.