The Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series of Hope College will feature Benjamin Busch and Ismet Prcić on Thursday, Jan. 30, at 7 p.m. in Winants Auditorium of Graves Hall.

There will also be a question-and-answer session on Thursday, Jan. 30, at 3:30 p.m. in the Fried-Hemenway Auditorium in the Martha Miller Center for Global Communication.

The public is invited to both events. Admission is free.

Benjamin Busch is the author of the memoir “Dust to Dust,” which won the 2013 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for creative non-fiction. His writing has been featured in “Harper’s” and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Busch is also a United States Marine Corps infantry officer, photographer, film director and actor whose many roles have included Officer Anthony Colicchio on the HBO series “The Wire.”

He has also appeared as a guest commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” He lives on a farm in Michigan with his wife and two daughters.

Ismet Prcić has won critical acclaim for his novel “Shards” for its unflinching portrait of violence and refugee plight.  The book won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for fiction in 2013.

Prcić was born in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1977. He fled Bosnia and the Balkan conflict in 1996, but he did not escape the war. Although the veteran actor settled in California and tried to reinvent himself, he gradually decided to write a book about the war he left and the country he found. The book became “Shards,” which divides its attention between two characters: Ismet Prcić, based on the author’s actual experiences, and Mustafa Nalic, a soldier who stays to fight grueling battles in the former Yugoslavia.

Prcić holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and was the recipient of a 2010 NEA Award for fiction. He is also a 2011 Sundance Screenwriting Lab fellow. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife.

Additional information is available online at jrvws.org.

Graves Hall is located at 263 College Ave., between 10th and 12th streets.

The Martha Miller Center for Global Communication is located at 257 Columbia Ave., on Columbia Avenue at 10th Street.