Noted author and Lackawanna native Connie Porter will speak at Buffalo State College at 7:30 p.m., Sept. 24, in Bulger Communication Center North on the campus at 1300 Elmwood Ave.

A City Honors graduate, Porter is the second youngest of nine brothers and sisters. After graduating from the State University of New York at Albany in 1981, she earned an M.F.A. from Louisiana State University and later attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has taught English and creative writing at Milton Academy and Emerson College in Massachusetts and at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

She is the author of two novels – “All-Bright Court,” selected by the American Library Association as one of the Best Books of 1991 and by the New York Times as one of its Notable Books of 1991, and “Imani All Mine” – and has written 13 Addy Walker books for the popular American Girls series that have sold more than three million copies. Named a regional winner in Granta's Best Young American Novelists contest for All-Bright Court, Porter lives in Virginia.

The event, in which the author will sign books, is free and open to the public, and is sponsored by the Buffalo State College Center for Excellence in Urban and Rural Education, the English Department and the Urban Educators Network.