8 Main Street Amherst, MA 01002 ·
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books@amherstbooks.com
Events
Events listed in white are at the bookshop; events listed in yellow are elsewhere.
Unless noted otherwise all events are free & open to the public.
(Click on a picture or a title to check our inventory or to purchase.)
- Monday, October 1st at 8:00pm (Poetry reading)
Ghassan Zaqtan &
Fady Joudah will read from their new book,
Like a Straw Bird it Follows Me: And Other Poems. Zaqtan is an Arabic Poet, worked with the PLO, & is editor of the literary page of the
Al-Ayyam daily newspaper in Ramallah. He has published several volumes of poetry & one novel. Joudah is a Palestinian-American poet & physician. He is the 2007 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for his collection of poems
The Earth in the Attic. Aside from translating Zaqtan’s poetry, he is a noted translator of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.
Sponsored by the
Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.
- Thursday, October 4th at 4:30pm (Talk)
Rebecca Scott will talk in
Pryune Lecture Hall, Fayerweather, Amherst College about her new book,
Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation. Scott is Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History & Professor of Law at the University of Michigan.
- Friday, October 5th at 7:00pm (Reading & book launch party)
Jules Chametzky will read from his new book,
Out of Brownsville: Encounters with Nobel Laureates & Other Jewish Writers—A Cultural Memoir. Chametzky, is a Jewish American literary critic, writer, editor, & unionist. His essays in the 1960s & 1970s on the importance of race, ethnicity, class, & gender to American literary culture anticipated the later schools of New Historicism & Cultural Studies in American letters. Chametzky was a founder & long-time editor of the
Massachusetts Review, an editor of
Thought & Action, the journal of the National Education Association, as well as the third President of the Massachusetts Society of Professors, the faculty/library union at the University of Massachusetts. He was also a founding member of the Coordinating Committee of Literary Magazines (CCLM, now Council of Literary Magazines and Presses) & its first secretary. He is a co-editor of
Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology & author of
From the Ghetto: The Fiction of Abraham Cahan.
- Wednesday, October 17th at 8:00pm (Poetry reading)
Amherst resident
Patrick Pritchett will read from his recent work. Pritchett is author of many essays on poetry & poetics, as well several volumes of poetry, including
Antiphonal;
Burn; & his latest collection,
Gnostic Frequencies. He is currently a Lecturer in the History & Literature Program at Harvard University. Sponsored by the
Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.
- Thursday, October 18th at 7:00pm (Poetry reading)
Lucie Brock-Broido will read. Brock-Broido’s volumes of poetry include
Trouble in Mind,
Master Letters &
Hunger. She has received many honors, including the Witter-Bynner prize of Poetry from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award, the Harvard-Danforth Award for Distinction in Teaching, the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, & a Guggenheim fellowship. She is currently Director of Poetry in the Writing Division at Columbia University Presented in conjunction with the Harvard Club of Western Massachusetts & the Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard.
- Friday, October 19th at 7:30pm (Reading)
“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.
- Sunday, October 21st at 3:00pm (Book launch party)
Join Amherst resident
George Wardlaw in celebrating the publication of a book celebrating his six decades as an artist—
George Wardlaw: Crossing Borders. Wardlaw, who taught at the University of Massachusetts, has work permanently displayed in several public & museum collections & has had shows at the deCordova Museum & the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.
- Wednesday, October 24th at 8:00pm (Reading)
Stephanie Reents will read from her recent work. Reents is author of
The Kissing List, a series of interlocking stories. Reents's work has been included in the O. Henry Prize Stories, noted in Best American Short Stories, & has appeared in numerous journals, including
Epoch. Sponsored by the
Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.
- Thursday, October 25th at 7:00pm (Reading)
Amherst resident
Karen Osborn will read from her new book,
Centerville. Osborn, who teaches at Mt. Holyoke College, is the author of three previous novels:
Patchwork,
Between Earth & Sky, &
The River Road. Widely reviewed in places such as
The New York Times,
USA Today, & the
Washington Post, she has been described as a writer of ”tremendous, quiet power.“ Her work is deeply psychological & interested in women & families.
- Friday, October 26th at 7:00pm (Reading)
Nicholas Soutter will read from his new dystopian thriller,
The Water Thief. His protagonist, Charles Thatcher, lives in world where everything is for sale & lies are more profitable than truth.
Kirkus Reviews said, “Profound...sure to spark a reaction....scathing, ceaselessly engaging.” Souter is the author of award-winning essays on politics & the social sciences. He lives in Boston.
- Tuesday, October 30th at 7:00pm (Reading)
Ava Farmer will read from her new tour-de-force,
Second Impressions. Written in the idiom of Jane Austen, Farmer’s novel is a sequel to
Pride & Prejudice, exploring the characters’ lives during the late Regency. Ava Farmer is the pen name of Sandy Lerner, founder of the Chawton House Library & Centre for the Study of Early English Writing in Chawton, Hampshire, England. For her work on the collection, preservation, & establishment of the Library & Study Centre, she has received five honorary PhD degrees. She has received numerous awards for her philanthropic & literary contributions, including the inaugural JANE Award from the Jane Austen Society of North America.
- Tuesday, October 30th at 8:00pm (Poetry reading)
Alice Oswald will read in
University Club, University of Massachusetts. Oswald, a gardener, classicist, & poet, is author of six volumes of poetry, including
Spacecraft Voyager 1, &
Memorial: A Version of Homer's Iliad. She is the recipient of the Eric Gregory Award, The T.S. Eliot Prize, & the Forward Poetry Prize. Sponsored by the
University of Massachusetts MFA Program’s Visiting Writers Series.