This week

• Brigit Pegeen Kelly and Gray Jacobik will give back-to-back readings at the University of Southern Maine later this week. Both are free and open to the public.

Kelly is featured in the 12th annual Katherine O’Brien Poetry reading sponsored by the USM English Department through a bequest from the O’Brien family. She will read at 4 p.m. Friday and present an informal talk between 2 and 3 p.m. in the 7th floor Events Room of the Glickman Library on the Portland campus.

Considered to be one of the best American poets writing today, Kelly has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy of American Poets.

Kelly’s third collection, “The Orchard,” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.

For more information, call the USM English Department at 780-4291.

Jacobik is known in Maine as a former faculty member in the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program at USM. She won the Yeats Prize, the Emily Dickinson Prize, the Juniper Prize, the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize and the AWP Poetry Series Award, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing.

Jacobik will read at 5 p.m. Thursday, also in the 7th floor Events Room of the Glickman Library.

For more information, call Mary Snell at 892-9831 or Pat Budd at 774-6424.

Coming up

• The Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield hosts a trio of shows in early November worth checking out.

On Nov. 10, it’s Dave Alvin and the Guilty Ones. On Nov. 12, Carol Noonan and the Stone Mountain Boys host Stone Mountain LIVE with guests singer-songwriter Tim O’Brien and Cajun fiddler and BeauSoleil founder Michael Doucet. On Nov. 13, Bela Fleck and the original Flecktones play two shows.

For information or to order tickets, visit stonemountainartscenter.com or call 935-7292.