Two Cleveland-area authors will be featured at Lit Youngstown’s next First Wednesday Readers Series event.

Lynda Montgomery’s stories have appeared in December, Another Chicago Magazine and Driftwood, and have been nominated for national awards. She was awarded residencies at Ragdale and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and she received an Individual Excellence Award from Ohio Arts Council.

She works as a family doctor and lives with her family in Shaker Heights.

Toni Thayer has received two Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards, one in 2020 for fiction and another in 2016 for playwriting. She holds a master’s degree in fiction from Goddard College and a master’s in English from Cleveland State. She has taught at Cleveland State, Hathaway Brown School and Lit Cleveland.

The reading starts at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Soap Gallery, 117 S. Champion St., Youngstown, and will be followed by an open mic co-hosted by Terry Shears. Admission is free.

For more information, go to www.LitYoungstown.org.