Louisiana Tech’s department of English will sponsor a reading and discussion with author John Corey Whaley at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 24 in Adams Parlor. Whaley will read from his debut novel, “Where Things Come Back,” which, under the title “Good God Bird,” was a semi-finalist in Amazon.com’s Breakthrough Novel Awards in 2008. He began his novel in 2005 while a student at Tech after hearing a story on NPR about the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker’s possible reappearance in Brinkley, Ark. Whaley graduated from Tech with his bachelor’s in English in 2006 and his master’s in teaching in 2009. He teaches gifted eighth-grade English students at Youree Drive Middle School in Shreveport. Admission to the event is free and open to the public.