MARQUETTE, Mich.—Peter Nichols, one of this summer’s visiting professors in the Northern Michigan University English department, will read from his works at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 7, in the Charcoal Room of the University Center. The public is invited to this free event.

Nichols is the author of A Voyage for Madmen, which chronicles a 1968 race to be the first person to sail – alone and nonstop – around the world. His novel Evolution’s Captain, the story of the captain of the HMS Beagle, was voted one of the 25 best books of 2004 by the Seattle Times and optioned for film by Oscar-winning producer Cathy Schulman. He has also written the memoir Sea Change: Alone across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat and the novel Voyage to the North Star. His most recent book, Final Voyage: A Story of Arctic Disaster and One Fateful Whaling Season, will be released in paperback this fall under the title Oil and Ice.

Nichols’ articles, criticism and travel journalism have appeared in The New York Times, The London Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The London Review of Books, GQ, Outside, Men’s Journal, Best Life, Cruising World, Voyaging, Salon.com, and Gourmet. He has taught creative writing at New York University in Paris, Georgetown University, Bowdoin College and the University of Arizona.

His reading is sponsored by the Department of English and Passages North literary magazine. For more information, call 227-2711.