The Bailey Public Library in downtown Winthrop will host award-winning newspaper reporter Amy Calder at 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 23. Calder will give a discussion and read from her new book “Comfort is an Old Barn: Stories from the Heart of Maine.” The event is part of the annual Lakes Region Forum series sponsored by the Winthrop Library Foundation.

Calder covers city government and reports on everything from murders and car crashes to fires and drug busts. Her 35-year career started at the Waterville Sentinel Bureau in Skowhegan, where she served as Bureau Chief for several years and chased stories from Jackman to Fairfield and Farmington to Newport.

Since 2009, Calder has written a weekly human interest column, “Reporting Aside,” which appears in both the Sentinel and the Kennebec Journal. “Comfort is an Old Barn” is a curated collection of those columns, which include sketches of colorful characters, quirky animals and special moments, as well as personal stories about living in Maine.

Calder was born in Waterville and holds a B.A. in English from the University of Hartford and completed post-graduate work at UMass Amherst. She grew up and Skowhegan and lives in Waterville with her husband and two cats.

She has won more than two dozen awards from the Maine Press Association and New England Associated Press News Executives Association.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information contact the library at 377-8673 or visit baileylibrary.org.