Will Baker, a professor of English at the University of California, Davis, will read selections from his newly published collection of short stories at 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 26, at the campus. Baker will read from "What a Piece of Work: Stories" in the Kleiber Hall auditorium. His reading is the first in the annual Spotlight on UC Davis Faculty Writers series, which will draw upon members of the UC Davis English department's creative writing program. All of the readings, which are free and open to the public, will take place in Kleiber Hall. "What a Piece of Work" satirizes various aspects of American culture, including self-help fads, corporate conformity, commercialized modern art and sexual affairs. Baker has won a Pushcart Prize for fiction, as well as other awards for nonfiction and films. He has published four novels and has two more in progress. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gary Snyder will read from his work at 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 2. Snyder, who won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1974, most recently published "The Practice of the Wild," a collection of essays on nature and culture, and "No Nature," a volume of selected poems. He will read from these two collections and from works in progress. Sandra Gilbert will read from her new poems at 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9. She has built an international reputation for her feminist critical studies "The Mad Woman in the Attic" and "No Man's Land." She also has published four volumes of poetry, including "Blood Pressure." Books published by each author will be for sale before each reading, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the Kleiber Hall lobby. Book signings will follow each reading. The series is sponsored by the UC Davis English department, the College of Letters and Science and the Office of Graduate Studies.