An ink-stained wretch, The Simpsons and Friends and Strangers in colonial Pennsylvania all play a role in author events this month.

And those are only the indoor events.

Outdoors, the arboretum is presenting a pair of Writers in the Garden programs, with guests who are due to read from their works and talk about the importance of the natural world in their writing.

All events, indoors and out, are free and open to the public.

Conversations With Writers

The University Writing Program presents journalist and novelist Paul McHugh in the last installment in the 2009-10 Conversations With Writers series. His appearance is scheduled for 4 p.m. May 18 in 126 Voorhies Hall.

His topic: "Challenge in Modern Media: Visions of an Ink-Stained Wretch."

McHugh worked as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle for more than 20 years and continues to contribute to The New York Times, The Washington Post and several national magazines, as well as California newspapers.

His recently published novel, Deadlines, is a murder mystery set around a corporate conspiracy to hijack public park land. Standing in the way is an aging, alcoholic, erstwhile columnist who rediscovers his journalist’s instincts and sense of purpose amid a newsroom unravelling in an age of electronic media.

UC Davis Bookstore

The bookstore announced two author events, one at noontime on campus, the other in the evening in downtown Davis:

• John Smolenski, an assistant professor of history at UC Davis, discussing his new work Friends and Strangers: The Making of a Creole Culture in Colonial Pennsylvania. Noon-1:30 p.m. May 25, bookstore lounge.

Friends and Strangers, the first history of Pennsylvania's founding in more than 40 years, offers a provocative new look at the transfer of English culture to North America. Setting Pennsylvania in the context of the broader Atlantic phenomenon of creolization, Smolenski's account of the Quaker colony's origins reveals the vital role this process played in creating early American society.

Smolenski argues that Pennsylvania's early history can best be understood through the lens of creolization — the process by which Old World habits, values and practices were transformed in a New World setting. Unable simply to transplant English political and legal traditions across the Atlantic, Quaker leaders gradually forged a creole civic culture that secured Quaker authority in an increasingly diverse colony.

By mythologizing the colony's early settlement and casting Friends as the ideal guardians of its uniquely free and peaceful society, they succeeded in establishing a shared civic culture in which Quaker dominance seemed natural and just.

• Karma Waltonen, a lecturer in the University Writing Program, discussing her new work about The Simpsons animated television show and its “excellent, if unexpected” contributions to high school and college lesson plans. 7-8:30 p.m. May 26, Bistro 33, in Davis’ old City Hall, 226 F St. (near Third Street).

The book, The Simpsons in the Classroom: Embiggening the Learning Experience with the Wisdom of Springfield, is from McFarland & Company Inc., which states on its website: “The object of much debate, attention and scholarship since it first aired more than 20 years ago, The Simpsons provides excellent, if unexpected, fodder for high school and college lesson plans."

“After all, laughing students are hardly sleeping students!

“But The Simpsons also provides a familiar student knowledge base which instructors can use as a jumping-off point to introduce concepts in literature, composition, linguistics, cultural studies, gender studies and media appreciation.”

Waltonen and her co-author, Denise Du Vernay of the Milwaukee School of Engineering, have been teaching The Simpsons for more than a decade, and in this book they share exercises, prompts and even syllabi that the authors say have proven successful in their own courses.

Writers in the Garden

In this arboretum series, writers read from their work and talk about the importance of the natural world in their writing. Each program is scheduled for 7 p.m. on the Wyatt Deck along Old Davis Road.

• David Robertson — The UC Davis professor emeritus of English is a writer and photographer and a two-time artist-in-residence in Yosemite National Park (1990 and ’94). His books include On the Road Ecology (2008); Real Matter (1997), in which he retraces the mountain adventures of several American authors and looks for his own meaning; and West of Eden: A History of the Art and Literature of Yosemite (1984). May 25.

• Dorine Jennette — Davis poet whose recently published collection, Urchin to Follow, received a National Poetry Review Book Prize. Connie Voisine, an assistant professor at New Mexico State University, where she teaches poetry and creative writing, contributed a review to the National Poetry Review Press website, writing: “With humor and a searing intelligence, Jennette presents us with her subjects: the natural world and the postmodern condition.” June 1.