FARMINGTON — Maine author Susan Conley read from her memoir Thursday night as part of the University of Maine at Farmington’s Visiting Writers Series.

Conley is a creative writing professor from Woolwich and co-founder of a nonprofit creative writing center called The Telling Room in Portland. She read a passage from her 2010 memoir, “The Foremost Good Fortune,” to a full audience of students, teachers and residents.

Conley described her book as “a travelogue meets family memoir meets cancer memoir.”

“At one point while writing, I asked myself, ‘Can a memoir hold all of that,’” she said.

The memoir follows Conley, her husband and her two sons as they move from their home in Portland to a high-rise apartment in Beijing for two years. While living here, Conley discovered she had breast cancer and was forced to confront the diagnosis with her family.

Conley said she began writing her memoir before her cancer diagnosis. Originally, the book was to focus on her experiences in Beijing. Later, when she was diagnosed, she said she almost stopped writing the book.

“The cancer diagnosis created a different voice in my writing,” Conley said. “A sadder voice.”

However, Conley said she was able to find a way to reconcile the two topics and help them inform one another. When a student asked how she was able to combine writing about cancer and her two-year stint in Beijing with one another, Conley replied, “I did it by weaving my family memories and my cancer fears together. You never stay too long on one topic before you cut back and move to the next one.”

Conley also gave advice to the students at the reading, suggesting that when writing, “try and stay in the scene for awhile.”

“When I was writing my memoir, sometimes, I would write a scene and hang out in it for awhile,” Conley explained. “I didn’t ditch it. I didn’t get nervous. I realized that there was more to write about before I could end it. Don’t go for the easy ending.”

Another student asked Conley how living in China for two years affects her life today. Conley answered that living in China was “the greatest adventure of my life” and that she “thinks about China every day.”

“I can’t fully be back from my life there,” Conley said. “Beijing had a sense of “no rules” and lawlessness that was intoxicating, as if anything could happen. I miss the spontaneity of Beijing, the mad rush of entrepreneurial craziness.”

After returning from China, Conley said her family took in a student from China for several months, and upon walking to her house, the student said, “There’s more Chinese stuff in your house than there is in my house in China.”

Conley smiled at the student and said, “I think that answers your question.”

Conley ended the reading by suggesting that each person “get in a car or a plane or a train and just go” because “being on the move will enhance your writing in ways you can’t imagine.”

Conley’s writing has also appeared in The Paris Review, The Harvard Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Gettysburg Review, The North American Review, Ploughshares and elsewhere. She is currently finishing writing a fiction novel.

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