ORONO – As a companion to the much-anticipated University of Maine visit by American Indian author, poet and screenwriter Sherman Alexie, UMaine will offer a one-credit, five-week course based on Alexie’s work.

The course, Building the Fire: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Films of Sherman Alexie, will be taught by UMaine professors Maureen Smith and Margo Lukens. It is scheduled 4:20-6:30 p.m. Tuesdays, March 16 through April 13.

One need not be a degree-seeking UMaine student to register for the course. For registration information, call 581-3143.

Alexie is a Spokane Coeur d’Alene who lives in Wellpinit, Wash. He is an internationally known creative force who has written seven books of poetry, several collections of short stories, and two novels.

He also produced and wrote the screenplay for the film, “Smoke Signals,” which is based on Alexie’s book “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.”

One of the first publications to give a boost to Alexie’s poetry was the Maine-based quarterly, the Beloit Poetry Journal. He went on to earn poetry fellowships from the Washington State Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Alexie will be at UMaine at 8 p.m. Friday, April 19, for a presentation, “Without Reservations: An Urban Indian’s Comic, Poetic and Highly Irreverent Look at the World,” at the Maine Center for the Arts. The event is free and open to the public.