This year’s edition of Out Loud! The Metro Library Network Author Series gets underway on Tuesday, April 19 at 7 p.m. with Stephen Lovely, whose novel Irreplaceable is the 2011 Linn Area Reads book. All series events—which are free and open to the public with no tickets required—will take place in Ballantyne Auditorium on the Kirkwood Community College Campus. The Out Loud! Author Series is a program of the Cedar Rapids, Marion, and Hiawatha Public Libraries.

Lovely attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and worked for seven years as a night clerk in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. In 2005, he became director of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, a summer residential creative writing program for high school students. Irreplaceable, which is set in a fictionalized Iowa City, explores the many issues surrounding organ transplants.

The Linn Area Reads program has already hosted several well-attended events related to the novel. The community reading program wraps up with Lovely’s Out Loud! reading.

Following his reading, Lovely will take questions from the audience and then sign books. The Cedar Rapids Barnes & Noble will be on hand with copies of Irreplaceable available for purchase.

The Out Loud! Author Series will present five additional authors in 2011 including Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia, on Sunday, May 15 at 2 p.m.; Andrew Shaffer, author of Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love, on Sunday, May 22, at 2 p.m.; Laurell K. Hamilton, author of the popular “Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter” novels, on Friday, June 10, at 7 p.m.; Steve Martini, author of the thrillers featuring Paul Madriani, on Friday, June 24, at 7 p.m.; and Meg Cabot, bestselling author for youth and adults, on Tuesday, July 12 at 7 p.m.

More information about the Out Loud! Author Series, as well as information about the Linn Area Reads program, is available at www.metrolibrarynetwork.org. Stephen Lovely’s web site can be found at www.stephenlovely.com.

Out Loud! The Metro Library Network Author Series is supported by the Giacoletto Foundation with media support from The Gazette and event book sales provided by Barnes & Noble Booksellers. Stephen Lovely’s event is supported in part by a grant from the Iowa Arts Council, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.