picture of Amherst Books

Quick book search:
(Author and/or Title
   —up to three words)

Advanced Search


Sign up for our
event mailing list!

Email address:

We will never share your email.

Links of Interest:

Dickinson Homestead

Reader's Circle

Greenfield Optimist



bus
We now sell
  Peter Pan
bus tickets!


Amherst Books
8 Main Street  Amherst, MA 01002  ·   413.256.1547  ·  800.503.5865  ·  books@amherstbooks.com
Events

< October 2006 >

Events listed in white are at the bookshop; events listed in yellow are elsewhere.

All events are free & open to the public.

(Click on a picture or a title to check our inventory or to purchase.)
PowerPlay ImmortalGame
Jenny Adams & David Shenk will talk about the meaning & history of chess at Memorial Hall at the University of Massachusetts.   Adams is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts.   She is the author of Power Play: The Literature And Politics of Chess in the Late Middle Ages.  (Read more!)   Shenk is author of The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Art, Science & the Human Brain.   Aside from his interest in chess, Shenk writes regularly for The New Yorker, Harper‘s, & The National Geographic.   He has written four previous books, including The Forgetting: Alzheimer‘s: Portrait of an Epidemic & Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut .
MaverickRoom
Thomas Sayers Ellis will read as a part of the University of Massachusetts M.F.A. Program's Visiting Writer Series in Memorial Hall at the University of Massachusetts.   Ellis was born & raised in Washington, D.C., & co-founded The Dark Room Collective in Cambridge, Massachusetts.   He is author several volumes of poetry, including The Maverick Room, & The Genuine Negro Hero.
JennyKrainski
Jenny Krainski will read from her recent young adult novel, The Leader of Nature, a sequel to Deep in the Forest.   A group of villagers from Deep in the Forest embark on a journey in search of answers to the mystery of a dead body discovered near their village.   Who was this person?   Why did the death occur in such a peculiar fashion?  Where did the person come from?   Unbeknownst to his comrades, one of the villagers, Shard, knows something he‘s not telling.   The group comes across ominous caverns & a unique tribe of people, which adds to the puzzle. Making matters more bizarre, one of them disappears after screaming in the night.   Soon, it is apparent that the group is not alone.   Discover how a journey that started out to satisfy curiosity rapidly turns into a fearful fight to stay alive. (Read more on our Local Authors page!)
MichaelFriedman
Poet Michael Friedman will read from recent work.   Friedman, whose day job is a lawyer, has taught poetry at the Naropa Insitute, is editor of the journal, Shiny, & is author of several volumes of poetry, including Species, Arts & Lettes, & Cameo.   His debut collection of short fiction, Martian Dawn, will be published in September 2006.   Harry Mathews observed that, “reading Martian Dawn is like watching an ultracool comedy of the future where familiar movie types develop into idyllic interplanetary characters in order to make yet more movies.   It’s as though Star Trek, Pretty Woman, & There’s Something About Mary had been sublimated in an unlikely fusion that is both comforting & hilarious”.
LateWife
Pulitzer Prize winning poet Claudia Emerson will sign copies of her most recent collection of poetry, Late Wife.   Claudia Emerson is also the author of the poetry books Pharaoh, Pharaoh & Pinion: An Elegy, both published in Dave Smith’s Southern Messenger Poets series.   Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Southern Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, New England Review, & other journals.
HePavestheRoad EvieShockley
“Jubilat/Jones Reading Series”   Poets Caroline Knox & Evie Shockley will read at the Jones Library.   Knox's books include He Paves the Road with Iron Bars & A Beaker: New & Selected Poems.   Her poems have appeared in New Republic, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, & elsewhere.   She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Yale/Mellon Visiting Faculty Program, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, The Fund for Poetry, & the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.   Shockley’s poetry collection, A Half-Red Sea, is forthcoming from Carolina Wren Press, which also published her chapbook, The Gorgon Goddess.   Her poems have appeared in numerous journals & anthologies, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Blue Fifth Review, Brilliant Corners, Callaloo, & Talisman.   Shockley, a Cave Canem fellow, is the recipient of a residency at the Hedgebrook retreat center for women writers & other awards supporting her work.   She teaches literature & creative writing at Rutgers University.
MusicinJewishHistory
Join us in celebrating the publication of a new book by University of Massachusetts professor Emanuel Rubin, Music in Jewish History & Culture.   (Read more on our local authors page!)  
CuriousFootprints
Nancy Pick & Frank Ward are authors of a new book, Curious Footprints : Professor Hitchcock's Dinosaur Tracks.   Few people realize that Amherst College holds the world’s largest collection of dinosaur tracks.   Pick's book explores how an evangelical minister (& Amherst College president) named Edward Hitchcock assembled that collection in the mid-1800s, while arguing that the tracks were made not by dinosaurs but by gigantic ancient birds.   Pick is the author of The Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, named one of the best science books of 2004 by Discover magazine.   Ward, the Amherst College photographer for 22 years, has taught photography there & at Smith College & is now a professor of photography at Holyoke Community College.   His work has appeared in Oprah magazine, Dance magazine & The New York Times.   (Read more!)
SecondhandWorld
Katherine Min will read from her new novel, Secondhand World.   Min’s short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, & Prairie Schooner, & have been widely anthologized, most recently in The Pushcart Book of Stories: The Best Short Stories from a Quarter-Century of The Pushcart Prize.   “Eyelids” was listed as one of 100 distinguished stories in The Best American Short Stories of 1997. “The Brick” was read on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts program in 1999.   “Courting a Monk” won a Pushcart Prize.   Co-sponsored by Amherst College’ Creative Writing Center.
Emilyreading
“Live Lit”   Students in the M.F.A. Program at the University of Massachusetts will read from their recent work.   Evenings usually include a mix of poetry & fiction.   Tonight’s readers are Andrew Roberts, Kim Hagerich & Cecily Iddings.
BlueTaxi
The reading by N. S. Köenings originally scheduled for this day has been rescheduled to November 16th.
CrybabyButch Edinburch
Judy Frank & Alexander Chee will read from works in progress; at Amherst College in the Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115).   Frank, who teaches English at Amherst College, is author of Crybaby Butch, which won the Astraea Foundation's Emerging Lesbian Writer's Fund prize in fiction & the Lambda Literary Foundation’s price for Debut Lesbian Fiction.   (Read more!)   Chee, a new writer in residence at Amherst College, is author of Edinburgh, which won the Michener/Copernicus Prize in fiction, the Asian American Writers Workshop Literary Award, the Lambda Editor's Choice Prize, & was named a Best Book of the Year by Publisher’s Weekly.   Sponsored by Amherst College’s Creative Writing Center.
Emilyreading
“Live Lit”   Students in the M.F.A. Program at the University of Massachusetts will read from their recent work.   Evenings usually include a mix of poetry & fiction.   Tonight is a Second Year reading night; readers are Jamie Berger, Heather Christle, Patrick Robbins, Jeannie Hoag, Sara Javee, & Jackie Wasneski.
TheCatastrophist
CANCELEDAmherst College professor Lawrence Douglas will sign copies of his witty & disquieting first novel, The Catastrophist.   Lawrence, author of the The Memory of Judgment: Making Law & History in the Trials of the Holocaust & (with Alexander George) Sense & Nonsensibility: Lampoons of Learning & Literature, manages to combine the range of his sensibilities to create a tragicomic academic novel which dances nimbly along the appallingly misguided life of a Holocaust studies professor. (Read more on our Local Authors page!)

Last updated 16 October, 2008Site Map