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

< March 2024 >

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

Unless noted otherwise all events at the bookshop are free & open to the public.   We recommend masks!

For events elsewhere, there may be vaccine or masking requirements.   Please follow the links to check.



Point/Counterpoint Series
Ilan Stavans, Amherst College professor, author, & editor of numerous titles, including the recent The People’s Tongue: Americans & the English Language, will talk with John McWhorter in the Stirn Auditorium, Amherst College.   McWhorter McWhorter is an American linguist with a specialty in creole languages, sociolects, & Black English.  He is currently an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University, where he also teaches American studies & music history.   He is author of numerous books, including Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, Nine Nasty Words English in the Gutter Then Now & Forever , & Talking Back: Talking Black Truths About Americas Lingua Franca   For more information, see here.
Jewish educator & rabbi, award-winning author, speaker, & activist Abby Chava Stein, will talk in Integrative Learning Center S331, UMass, Amherst, on “How to Navigate Hope & Sacrifice Your Truest Self.”   Stein is author of numerous books, including Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman.   For more information, see here.
Cassidy Sugimoto will talk in Lederle Hall, Room A112, UMass, Amherst, about “Equity for Women in Science.”  Sugimoto is Professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology.   She is author of numerous books, including Equity for Women in Science: Dismantling Systemic Barriers to Advancement.   For more information go here.
Vivek Narayanan will read from his recent poetry at the CHI Think Tank (Lyceum 101), 197 South Pleasant St., Amherst as part of the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series .   Narayanan has published poetry in journals such as Poetry, The Paris Review, Granta, Harvard Review, & Agni.     His published volumes include Short Prayer, Life & Times of Mr S, & After, among others.

The Amherst College Visiting Writers Series presents “Burmese Diasporic Writers: Maw Shein Win, Audrey T. Williams, Kenneth Wong” at the CHI Think Tank (Lyceum 101), 197 South Pleasant St., Amherst.  Maw Shein Win is a Burmese American poet, editor, & educator.   She was the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California.   She has published several prize-winning chapbooks, & her full-length poetry collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House was long-listed for the 2021 PEN America Open Book Award, nominated for a Northern California Book Award for Poetry, & shortlisted for the Golden Poppy Award.   Williams is a speculative literary artist who writes poetry, fiction, & creative non-fiction.   Her writing is published in Conjuring Worlds: An Afrofuturist Textbook, Space & Time magazine, among others.   She is a Program Coordinator for the Afrosurreal Writers Workshop of Oakland, Co-chair of the Speculative Literature Foundation’s San Francisco Bay Area chapter, & a board member of the Black Speculative Arts Movement’s Oakland chapter.   Wong is a Burmese American author & a language instructor. His short stories, essays, & poetry translations have appeared in AGNI, The Irrawaddy, Myanmar Times, & more.  For more information see here.

Anthropologists Pinky Hota & Joe Lee will talk about their new books—Hota’s The Violence of Recognition: Adivasi Indigeneity & Anti-Dalitness in India; Lee’s Concealing Caste: Narratives of Passing and Personhood in Dalit Literature.   Hota teaches at Smith College   Informed by critical caste & race, & gender & sexuality approaches, her research examines right wing politics in the context of contemporary capitalism, & participates in Smith’s Program for the Study of Women & Gender.   Lee teaches at Williams College where he conducts research on religion, language, caste & the state in South Asia.
Michael Willrich will give the “2024 Distinguished Annual Lecture in History” in Herter Hall 601, 161 Presidents Drive, UMass, Amherst.   His new book, American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals & the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century will form the basis of his talk.   Willrich is is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow and the Leff Families Professor of History at Brandeis University, where he has received university-wide prizes for his undergraduate and graduate teaching.
Meghana Mysore, currently a visiting professor at Amherst College, will read & talk about her work at the CHI Think Tank (Lyceum 101), 197 South Pleasant St., Amherst, as part of the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.   A 2022-2023 Steinbeck Fellow, her work appears in Pleiades, Apogee, Passages North, The Yale Review, The Rumpus, Indiana Review, Boston Review, The Margins of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, & the anthology A World Out of Reach.
Help us celebrate the publication of local author David Toomey’s new book, Kingdom of Play: What Ball-Bouncing Octopuses, Belly-Flopping Monkeys, & Mud-Sliding Elephants Reveal about Life Itself.   Toomey teaches courses in writing & in the history of science at the University of Massachusetts.   He is author of numerous books, including Stormchasers: The Hurricane Hunters & Their Fateful Flight Into Hurricane Janet, Weird Life: The Search for Life That Is Very, Very Different from Our Own, & The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics.
Point/Counterpoint Series
Ilan Stavans, Amherst College professor, author, & editor of numerous titles, including the recent The People’s Tongue: Americans & the English Language, will talk with John Morse in the Stirn Auditorium, Amherst College.   Morse is the former President & Publisher of Merriam-Webster Incorporated.   He joined Merriam-Webster in 1980, serving first as an assistant editor, then as Manager of Editorial Operations & Planning & later as Executive Editor responsible for product-development operations.  He became President & Publisher in 1997 but remained actively involved in editorial activities.   For more information, see here.

Jennifer Rosner & Karen Chase will read.   Rosner is author of, among other books, The Yellow Bird Sings, & Once We Were Home, which is now just out in paperback.   Both were finalists for the National Jewish Book Award.   Chase is author of numerous collections of poetry, including Jamali-Kamali, a book-length homoerotic poem which takes place in Mughal India; essays & memoirs.   Her new book, a collection of essays, is History is Embarrassing.   Both live in Western Massachusetts.
Margaret Juhae Lee will read from her new book, Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History, the true story of her grandfather, Lee Chul Ha, which was lost in early twentieth-century Korea.   Lee was an editor for the Books & the Arts section at The Nation magazine.   Her articles, interviews & book reviews have been published in The Nation, Newsday, Elle, ARTnews, The Progressive, & most recently in The Rumpus & Ploughshares Blog.

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