Local novelist to attend book discussion

Monroe — Local novelist M. J. Goff will attend a discussion of her 2007 novel “The Bench” on Wednesday, Sept. 12, at the Monroe Free Library. Discussion will be led by the library book club with Goff on hand to answer questions about her work and her experience as a writer. Goff, who writes under the name M. Catherine Hanley, has lived in Monroe since 2000, when she moved to Orange County from Valley Stream. She spent much of the 1990s freelancing for Newsday magazine, and is now a regular contributor to the Times Herald-Record. “The Bench” is Hanley’s first novel. Her next novel, Twenty-One, is due in 2008.