Dr. Frank Dobson Jr., author of the novel The Race is Not Given and the newly released Rendered Invisible: Stories of Blacks, Whites, Love and Death, will read from his work at 4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 27, in Bluffton University's Musselman Library. The reading is free and open to the public.

Dobson is executive director of the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and has taught African-American and American fiction courses at Wright State University, Dayton.

He has also taught courses at Bluffton and was the university's convocation speaker in the fall of 2005. As a creative writer, he has published both fiction and nonfiction works.

The author was invited to Bluffton by Dr. Susan Carpenter, assistant professor of English. "What I believe to be most beneficial about the reading is that it gives the audience an opportunity to gain a first-hand experience of Dobson's work from his own perspective," said Carpenter. The audience will also be able to ask questions and discuss his work.