Editor’s note: Writers’ Workshop is an occasional series about writing and the writing arts in and around Fairhope and beyond.

FAIRHOPE, Ala. — After a hurricane slams the Gulf Coast, an elderly couple head south to visit their son’s family in Perdido Beach but get stopped near Montgomery by an accident involving a tipped-over truckload of cows, many wandering dazedly about the scene.

“Sheriffs and state troopers, many on horses, darted among the uncooperative cattle, searching for anything herdable,” writes Baldwin County native son Christopher Schultz, in a 2004 short story, his first published fiction, in the prestigious Shenandoah literary magazine. “Dogs nipped ineffectually at the foggy animals. EMTs for once wished they were veterinarians. The fences flanking the interstate kept the cattle hemmed inside the roads and median, so it was unclear where even a successful herding attempt would culminate.

“Might as well be herding turtles,” said Walt to his wife Pix, in “The Reliability of Headlights,” an unexpectedly humorous but profound tale set amidst the carnage of crashed cars and dead bulls.

It’s that rare kind of story you might well end up reading aloud to the closest friend immediately on finishing it yourself.

“You’ve got to hear this,” you might say, reading slowly toward that punch line, which turns the “herding cats” cliché on its head, or back, much to your office mate’s surprised smile, then laughter.

Schultz, the current writer-in-residence at the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts, will appear twice this coming Wednesday — once in the morning and again in the evening — at the Fairhope campus of Faulkner State Community College, as the first author in the college’s new Visiting Writers Lecture & Workshop Series.

Initiated this year by Fairhope novelist and editor Sonny Brewer, the lecture series has already received offers from prominent Southern writers such as Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Rick Bragg and best-selling novelist Pat Conroy to participate in its early years’ programs for students, faculty and general public.

Brewer, who founded the writing arts center, was named this month as the first writer-in-residence at Faulkner State Community College with an office located at the Fairhope campus, out of which grew the new lecture series.

“I’m planning to read a short story about a civilian who returns home from the Iraq war that was published in Esquire and also from my novel-in-progress, which is set in Baldwin County and Ono Island between the time of Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina,” said Schultz, who has been a guest at the Wolff Writers’ Cottage in Fairhope since January and will be there through the summer while working to complete his first novel.

Schultz’s fiction and nonfiction has also appeared in the New York Times, ESPN The Magazine, Men’s Journal, and been recognized by Story magazine. He is co-author of “Planet Cancer,” slated for a fall 2010 release; and “The Yo Momma Vocabulary Builder,” a book used by schools and prisons throughout the country to teach SAT words through “yo momma” jokes, such as “Yo momma’s so antediluvian, she knew Cap’n Crunch while he was still a private.”

Schultz, 37, was raised in Foley, graduated from Duke University, founded an editorial and marketing business that he runs called Start Here, and comes to Fairhope most recently from Austin, Texas, but has also lived in Oxford, Miss., where he co-owned Easy Laundry, a laundry delivery service.

“Fiction is most fun to me, but sometimes nonfiction offers some extraordinary opportunities,” Schultz said this week. “I’ve spent much of the last two years working with my sister on “Planet Cancer” that comes out this fall. It’s an honest, funny, no-holds-barred book for the young adult (18-40, roughly) population affected by cancer, which includes their spouses, families and friends.”

Schultz also had a lot of fun, he said, while writing a profile for ESPN The Magazine.

“It’s about a Saudi prince who was obsessed with fantasy football,” Schultz said. “I spent several days with him in 2008 in Beverly Hills, much of it at his house in a gated community within Beverly Hills. Prince Abdullah was a fantastic guy, smart and curious and gracious, and it was a tremendous piece to write. We watched the NFL draft and went to great restaurants. He’s the biggest 49ers fan in the world, no doubt.”

In addition to reading from his work, Schultz will take questions and talk informally about writing during this kick-off event of the new lecture series at Faulkner State’s Centennial Hall in Fairhope on March 17, at 9:45 a.m., and again at 6 p.m.

“I suppose that I realized writing was something I wanted to be serious about when I was in college,” Schultz said. “I had some great teachers, and some encouraging ones, and some who were both.”

Although the morning reading and talk about writing is offered mainly for students and faculty, and the evening performance for the general public, both appearances are open and free to everyone, said Brewer, who will be teaching a course in creative writing during the fall semester at Faulkner State.

“I’m having a terrific experience in Fairhope,” Schultz said. “Returning home to work on a book? It can’t possibly get any better than that. I’m very very lucky and even more grateful to Fairhope, the Fairhope Library and the Center for the Writing Arts for inviting me to work here and supporting me while I’m here.”

For more information about Schultz, visit his Web site at www.starthereprojects.com; and for a copy of “End State,” the short story he plans to read Wednesday during the inaugural event of Faulkner State’s Visiting Writers Lecture & Workshop Series, visit http://www.esquire.com/fiction/fiction/fiction0507.