Kansas State University

MANHATTAN -- A wizard rock concert, fiction reading and lecture by an award-winning author are among the events being offered in April by Kansas State University's department of English.

All events are open to the public, and most are free. They include:

* A lecture by Robin Bernstein, associate professor of African and African-American studies and of studies of women, gender and sexuality at Harvard University, from 4-5 p.m. Friday, April 5, in Town Hall at the Leadership Studies Building. An award-winning scholar, Bernstein will speak on "Signposts on a Road Less Taken: John Newton Hyde's Anti-Racist Images of African-American Children." She is the author of the book "Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights," which was released in 2011 and has received numerous awards and honors. More information about Bernstein's work is available at http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~rbernst/RacialInn.html.

* A poetry reading celebrating Jonathan Holden, university distinguished professor of English at Kansas State University and Kansas' inaugural poet laureate, from 3:30-4:30 p.m. Saturday, April 6, at the K-State Alumni Center. Creative writing program alumni Ed Skoog, Derick Burleson, Greg German, and Michael Verschelden, along with Denise Low, Kansas poet laureate 2007-2009, will read their favorite Holden poems and some of their own works in honor of the professor, who is retiring this spring. A reception will follow.

* A fiction reading by former English faculty member Susan Jackson Rodgers from 3:30-4:30 p.m. Friday, April 12, in the Little Theatre at the K-State Student Union. Now an associate professor of English at Oregon State University, Rodgers is the author of two story collections, "The Trouble With You Is" and "Ex-Boyfriend on Aisle 6." Her fiction has appeared in journals such as the New England Review, North American Review, Glimmer Train and Prairie Schooner. Rodgers is the past recipient of two Kansas Arts Commission fellowships and a winner of the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition.

* The sixth annual Hallows and Horcruxes Ball: A Wizard Rock Concert for Literacy will start at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 13, at the K-State Alumni Center. For fans of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, the concert will feature performances by Seen and Unforeseen, Justin Finch-Fletchley and the Sugar Quills, The Whomping Willows, Lauren Fairweather, Alex Carpenter, Tonks and the Aurors, and the Ministry of Magic. The event is sponsored by the K-State Harry Potter Alliance, Children's and Adolescent Literature Community, department of English, Student Governing Association, Manhattan Music Coalition and more. Admission is free for students with a K-State ID; tickets are $12 for others. For more information, go to http://www.k-state.edu/chalc/HHBall.html.