PORTLAND – The Maine Hospice Council is sponsoring a seminar and social on Saturday to raise money for the Maine Center for End of Life Care.

“Giving Neurological Disorders Their Due” features Dr. Susan LeGrand, the medical director of the Cleveland Clinic Hospice.

Also scheduled to appear at the event in Portland is sports columnist Mitch Albom, known off the sports pages as the author of the best-selling “Tuesdays with Morrie.”

The book chronicles the journalist’s weekly visits with a former college professor dying of ALS, an incurable disease that slowly paralyzes the muscles while leaving the mind untouched.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The daylong hospice fund-raiser is being held at the Eastland Park Hotel in Portland.

In Augusta this week, legislative friends of Joe Mayo, the late clerk of the Maine House of Representatives who was afflicted with ALS, were promoting the effort and selling tickets at the State House.

Albom first drew notice as an award-winning sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press.

In 1997, he published “Tuesdays With Morrie,” which inspired an Emmy Award-winning TV movie. Actor Jack Lemmon played professor Morrie Schwartz in the TV adaptation.

Besides writing, Albom has been associated with the informal band Rock Bottom Remainders, which also has featured authors Stephen King, Dave Barry, Amy Tan and others.

Tickets for the hospice fund-raiser are $65 for the day, 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m., which includes a breakfast reception, seminar sessions and lunch; tickets for the Mitch Albom appearance only, from 1 to 4 p.m. are $30 and include a reception with refreshments, book signing and silent auction.