Several free events open to the public will be a part of Lit Youngstown’s 9th Fall Literary Festival, which runs today through Saturday.

Authors David Huebert and Sean Prentiss will read from their work and do a book signing at 7 p.m. Friday at St. John’s Episcopal Church, 323 Wick Ave., Youngstown.

Huebert, a highly acclaimed author of short story collections and the novel “Oil People,” teaches at University of King’s College in Halifax, Canada.

Prentiss is the author of a memoir, “Finding Abbey: the Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave,” which won the National Outdoor Book Award. He teaches at Norwich University and lives with his family on a lake deep in the woods of northern Vermont.

ASL interpretation will be provided by Meagan Albani.

Four public programs will take place at Butler North in the afternoon and evening on Saturday. At 1:30, Ohio writers Nin Andrews, Jen McConnell, Melanie Murphy and Paula J. Lambert will read their work and sign books.

Andrews, a longtime resident of Youngstown now of Virginia, is the author of the fifteen poetry collections and a new memoir, “Son of a Bird.” McConnell will read from her newest hybrid fiction collection, “Current Disasters.” Murphy, a NEOMFA graduate, is a writer of poetry and lyric essays. Lambert, a Columbus poet and editor, will read from her book “Sinkhole.”

Pennsylvania poets will read from “The Keystone Anthology,” a celebration of the varied landscapes and voices of Pennsylvania at 3 p.m.

The Craig Paulenich Endowed Lecture on Literary Community presents poet, editor and Cleveland State University Associate Professor Caryl Pagel on Small Press Ecologies at 4:45 p.m. This lecture will consider small presses as imaginative and defiant forces in contemporary culture.

The festival concludes with a reading featuring poets Todd Davis, Lauren Camp and Kortney Morrow at 7 p.m. with ASL interpretation by Albani.

Davis is the author of eight full-length collections of poetry and an emeritus fellow of the Black Earth Institute and professor of environmental studies at Pennsylvania State University. Camp serves as New Mexico Poet Laureate and is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently “In Old Sky.” Kortney Morrow is a poet and writer and program director for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards in Cleveland.

For more information on the festival and Lit Youngstown, go to www.LitYoungstown.org.