Dr. Lamar Nisly, professor of English at Bluffton University, will present a program Feb. 16 on his recently published book, "Wingless Chickens, Bayou Catholics and Pilgrim Wayfarers: Constructions of Audience and Tone in O'Connor, Gautreaux and Percy."

The event, also including a reception, is free and open to the public beginning at 4 p.m. in the Musselman Library Reading Room on the Bluffton campus. Nisly will also sign copies of his book, which will be available for purchase.

Published in January by Mercer University Press, the book is about Southern Catholic writers Flannery O'Connor, Tim Gautreaux and Walker Percy. More specifically, it deals with how they address audiences to whom they want to communicate matters of faith.

They do that very differently, despite their common regional and religious backgrounds, says Nisly, who attributes the differences to their individual experiences with their Catholic communities and how they were influenced by the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s.

Nisly came to Bluffton in 1996 after earning his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware. He was the university's Pathways Civic Engagement Scholar in 2008-09 and is current chair of its humanities division and general education committee.