• Thursday, February 7th at 4:00pm(Talk)

Music historian & cultural theorist Kevin Fellezs will talk on “Vital Transformations: Fusion’s Young Discontents” in Room 3 of Arms Music Center, Amherst College.   Fellezs is author of Birds of Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk, & the Creation of Fusion.

• Friday, February 8th at 7:00pm(Talk)

POSTPONED — to be rescheduled soon!Eve LaPlante will talk about her new book, Marmee & Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott & Her Mother.   LaPlante’s new book paints an exquisitely moving & utterly convincing portrait of a woman decades ahead of her time, & the fiercely independent daughter whose life was deeply entwined with her mother’s dreams of freedom.   LaPlante is also the editor of My Heart is Boundless: Writings of Abigail May Alcott, Louisa’s Mother; & author, among other books, of American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans, which won the Massachusetts Book Award for Nonfiction.

• Tuesday, February 12th at 4:30pm(Talk)

Peter Wortsman will talk in Pruyne Lecture Hall, Fayerweather Hall, Amherst College, about his new books, Ghost Dance in Berlin: A Rhapsody in Gray & Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann.   Wortsman is a translator of Peter Altenberg & Robert Musil.

• Thursday, February 14th at 8:00pm(Reading)

Amity Gaige will read at Alumni Hall, Amherst College, from her new novel, Schroder.   Gaige, who is author of two previous novels: The Folded World & O My Darling, was recognized as one of the “5 Under 35” outstanding emerging writers by the National Book Foundation in 2006, & was recipient of the Foreword Book of the Year Award for 2007.   She is the winner of a Fulbright Fellowship, fellowships at the MacDowell & Yaddo colonies, & a Baltic Writing Residency.   Sponsored by the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.

• Friday, February 15th at 7:00pm(Book launch party)

Join Robert Redick in celebrating the publication of the fourth & final volume in “The Chathrand Voyage Quartet”—The Night Swarm.  Earler volumes (in order) are The Red Wolf Conspiracy, The Ruling Sea, & The River of Shadows.

• Tuesday, February 19th at 8:00pm(Talk)

George Howe Colt will read from his new book, Brothers: On His Brothers & Brothers in History.   In alternate chapters Colt’s book examines how his own brothers shaped his life with an examination of the rich & complex relationships between the Booth, Van Gogh, Kellogg, Marx, & Thoreau brothers.   Colt is also author of Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home & November of the Soul: The Enigma of Suicide.   Co-sponsored by the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.

• Friday, February 22nd at 7:00pm(Poetry reading)

Novelist & poet Brad Leithauser will read from his most recent volume of poetry, The Oldest Word for Dawn: New & Selected Poems.   Leithauser is author of more than a half-dozen novels & collections of poetry.   A winner of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, Leithauser has been Emily Dickinson Lecturer in the Humanities at Mount Holyoke College, a visiting professor at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is now on faculty at The Johns Hopkins University in the writing seminars.

• Sunday, February 24th at 3:00pm(Poetry reading)

jubilat/Jones Reading Series at the Jones Library, Amherst, will feature poets Lily Laedwig & Lesle Lewis.   For more information go to jubilat/Jones Reading Series on Facebook.

• Tuesday, February 26th at 8:00pm(Poetry reading)

Michael Tyrell will read from his new collection of poetry, The Wanted.   Tyrell has published his poems & reviews in many journals, including The New Yorker, Ploughshares, & The Paris Review.   From 2001 until 2007 he was the book review editor of the literary magazine Chelsea.   Co-sponsored by the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.