DANBURY, CONN. — Best-seller “Larry’s Kidney” has been called a “side-splitting tour de force,” “skillful, funny fascinating,” and “a satisfying, hysterical page-turner” by some of the leading literary critics.

Author Daniel Asa Rose said it was the support and guidance from some of the most talented writers he knows from the Master of Fine Arts in professional writing program at Western Connecticut State University that helped him over the hurdles when he was writing the book.

Rose will wrap up a weeklong series of public readings sponsored by the university’s M.F.A. program at 7 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 7, by reading from “Larry’s Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black-Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant . . . And Save His Life.”

The public is invited to attend readings each evening beginning Sunday, Aug. 2, as well as an afternoon reading at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 5. The readings will be offered at sites on the university’s Midtown campus at 181 White St. and Westside campus at 43 Lake Avenue Ext. in Danbury, as well as the Tarrywile Mansion at 70 Southern Blvd. in Danbury and the Maron Hotel Bar, 42 Lake Avenue Ext. Admission will be free to all public readings.

Rose has participated in the M.F.A. residency and public lecture series at WCSU for the past five years. “I love the opportunity to hang out with my colleagues,” said Rose. “WestConn’s M.F.A. program is a warm environment. It’s a great community and it’s very supportive. Writing is such a lonely existence; it’s very isolated. To be able to pool your resources and take solace from each other is rare and wondrous.”

As he constructed his best-selling book, Rose said he asked for and received helpful advice from students and instructors during a previous engagement at the university.

“There were all these talented writers and they had great suggestions,” Rose said. “The finished product bears a lot of their help.”

The schedule of public readings is as follows:

Sunday, Aug. 2, from 7 to 10 p.m.: Kathy Belby and Dan Pope at the Maron Hotel Bar.

Author of “In the Cherry Tree” (Picador, 2003), Pope has had his stories published recently in Crazyhouse, Postroad, Iowa Review and numerous other magazines. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a winner of the Glenn Schaeffer Award and a grant in fiction from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.

Monday, Aug. 3, from 7 to 10 p.m.: Erik Mortenson, Lisa Siedlarz and Rita Ciresi at Tarrywile Mansion. Ciresi is the author of two award-winning short-story collections and is the director of creative writing at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Tuesday, Aug. 4, from 7 to 10 p.m.: Writer Jen Bouchard, actress Aaliyah Miller and publisher Ron Samul at the Midtown campus Student Center Theater. Samul holds an M.F.A. in Professional Writing from WestConn and is the publisher of the international e-zine, Miranda Literary Magazine. He writes for Inquiring News in Hartford, reviews books for Library Journal and is the founder of Northeast Boxing News.

Wednesday, Aug. 5, from 2 to 3 p.m.: Gwen Jones, P.J. Moretti and Nick Mamatas, Westside Campus Center Pub.

Wednesday, Aug. 5, from 7 to 10 p.m.: Kateri Kosek and Melissa Sanders-Self, the Maron Hotel Bar. Sanders-Self has published short fiction in anthologies by New Rivers Press, Doubleday and New Brighton Books. Her first novel, “All that Lives” (Warner Books, 2002), is based on the legend of the famous Bell Witch of Tennessee. She wrote, directed and produced the documentary film “Writing Women’s Lives,” which aired on PBS.

Thursday, Aug. 6, from 7 to 10 p.m.: Ed Kurpis and Don Snyder, Tarrywile Mansion.

Author and a 14-year veteran of NBC in New York, Kurpis is the co-founder and co-creator of CNBC, as well as a trained chef and a concert bassoonist with a New York symphony orchestra. The author of five novels, two memoirs, a biography and the 2003 Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas movie, “Fallen Angel,” Snyder also is a former newspaper editor, a former teaching-writing Fellow at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a James Michener Fellow.

The M.F.A. event will offer the Danbury community an opportunity to hear fiction, nonfiction, screenplay and poetry readings by nationally renowned authors, many of whom serve as writers in residence or writing mentors of the university’s M.F.A. in Professional Writing program. Launched in 2005, the program enables participants from across the nation to continue working while pursuing M.F.A. studies in a diverse range of creative and nonfiction writing genres through distance learning.

For more information, visit the M.F.A. program Web site at wcsu.edu/writing/mfa or call the M.F.A. office at (203) 837-8878.

Western Connecticut State University offers outstanding faculty in a range of quality academic programs. Our diverse university community provides students an enriching and supportive environment that takes advantage of the unique cultural offerings of Western Connecticut and New York. Our vision: To be an affordable public university with the characteristics of New England’s best small private universities.