SACO — Kate Clark Flora, a former assistant attorney general for the state of Maine and a best-selling mystery and crime writer will be speaking about her work and the writing process at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 10 at the Mary Weymouth Hyde library at Thornton Academy in Saco.

Admission is free, and the public is invited to come and listen to Flora as she speaks about her most recent work of nonfiction, will be available to sign her work and there will be copies of her novel for sale at the event.

When thinking about her craft, Flora once wrote: “John Gardner, in The Art of Fiction, says that what a writer does is put his dream in the reader’s head. For us to do that well, we have to imagine our places, our characters, and our characters’ emotions well enough so that when we write them, you will feel them. It’s always a challenge.”

Flora is a founding member the New England Crime Bake and Maine Crime Wave conferences, a founder of Level Best Books, where she worked as an editor and publisher for seven years, and she has served as the international president of Sisters in Crime. She also coordinates the Maine Crime Writers blog.

In an earlier life, Flora was an attorney, protecting battered kids and chasing deadbeat dads for the Maine attorney general’s office, and representing the Maine Human Rights Commission. It was there that she learned all that a crime writer would need to know about the human propensity to commit horrible acts.

Lloyd Hunt, a former teacher administrator, served as the school’s director of Academics and worked for Thornton Academy for more than three decades. Upon his retirement in 2010, the faculty and staff established a lecture series, funded by friends and colleagues, to honor his legacy and passion for teaching.

As part of the lecture series, authors are invited to come to campus and share information about their work and the creative process they use to produce their work. An emphasis is sometimes given to writers from Maine and those who have a connection to education.

Founded in 1811, Thornton Academy is one of the nation’s oldest independent schools. In the early days of the school, students attended from nearby towns and from around New England. When publicly-funded, mandatory education became law in the late 1800s, Thornton Academy’s Board of Trustees contracted with local communities – those that lacked schools beyond grade eight – to provide high school education for their children.

Today, nearly 1,600 students attend Thornton Academy and those students come from the surrounding communities and nearly 20 different countries. It has become one of the largest high schools in Maine.

Thornton Academy’s independence provides the autonomy to innovate, while remaining true to its traditions, values, and mission of preparing students for a changing world.