AUGUSTA — Author Amy Waldman will be the highlight of a month-long series of events celebrating Lithgow Public Library’s annual community-wide reading project, A Capital Read.

This year’s A Capital Read selection is Waldman’s debut novel “The Submission,” which explores the controversy and emotions surrounding a memorial for the victims of 9/11, as stated in a news release.

Waldman’s appearance will be at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 30 at the University of Maine at Augusta. Other programs in April will include a community art exhibit, a play adapted from “The Submission,” an evening of poetry and music, book discussions and an appearance by author and human-rights advocate Reza Jelali of the University of Southern Maine.

A Capital Read is underwritten by the Friends of Lithgow Library, in partnership with the University of Maine at Augusta.

“The Submission” examines the controversy that results when a jury chooses a walled garden as the design for a Ground Zero memorial. Jurors discover, when they open the envelope with the anonymous winner’s name, that the designer is a young Muslim American architect. In the conflicted response of the jury and the public, “The Submission” looks at the intersection of art, religion and politics, and asks some hard questions about the American values of tolerance, diversity and community.

“The Submission” was named a New York Times Notable Book for 2011, one of National Public Radio’s 10 Best Novels, Esquire’s Book of the Year, Entertainment Weekly’s No. 1 Novel for the Year, a Washington Post Notable Fiction Book and one of Amazon’s Top 100 Books and Top 10 Debut Fiction. It was a finalist for the Guardian (UK) First Book Award.

Waldman was a reporter for the New York Times for eight years and a national correspondent for The Atlantic. Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, the Boston Review and the Financial Times, and was anthologized in The Best American Non-Required Reading 2010. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

All events for A Capital Read are free and open to the public. For more information about A Capital Read, contact Lithgow Library at 626-2415 or visit the library’s website at www.lithgow.lib.me.us. Lithgow Library is located at 45 Winthrop St.