An award-winning writer kicks off this season’s Author Talk series at LaGrange Memorial Library.

Patricia Marchesi speaks at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the main reading area of the library at 115 Alford St. Her talk is sponsored by Friends of the Library.

Marchesi is assistant professor of English at LaGrange College, and her specialization is in Shakespeare and English Renaissance drama. In addition to scholarly articles, she has self-published two science-fiction novels for upper middle-grade readers: “Shelby & Shauna Kitt and the Dimensional Holes’’ and “Shelby & Shauna Kitt and the Alterax Buttons.’’ Both novels won Children’s Literary Classics gold awards. 

Recently, her academic research into the role of trees and forests in Shakespeare’s plays led to her discovery of how precious and rare old-growth forests are, inspiring her to write “Florissant,’’ a young-adult fantasy novel set in Georgia. The novel features Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream’’ as the backdrop and takes place in an imaginary old-growth forest inspired by the Chattahoochee National Forest. 

Marchesi is originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and also has lived in Austria and England. In the United States, she has lived in New York, Delaware, Colorado, Arizona and now Georgia. 

Her talk, titled “Inspiration to Publication,” is free and open to the public.