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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

< April 2011 >

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.)
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Join University of Massachusetts professor Ervin Staub in celebrating the publication of his new book, Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict, & Terrorism .   Staub is the Founding Director of the Doctoral program on the Psychology of Peace & Violence.   He is famous for his works on helping behavior & altruism, & on the psychology of mass violence & genocide.   He worked in schools to raise caring & non-violent children.   He has served as an expert witness, for example, at the Abu Ghraib trials; lectured widely on topics related to his work around the world & is the recipient of numerous honors.
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“Visiting Emily”: The Poetic Legacy of Emily Dickinson

A presentation & reading by Thom Tammaro & Sheila Coghill, editors of Visiting Emily: Poems Inspired by the Life & Work of Emily Dickinson.   Jones Library, 43 Amity Street, Amherst.   With Alice Fulton, Peggy O’Brien, & Richard Wilbur.

Part of the Emily Dickinson Museum’s The Big Read: Emily Dickinson 2011 Programs.
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“Art, Conflict, Identity: A Symposium with Israeli / Palestinian / American Writers & Artists” at Franklin Patterson, Main Lecture Hall, Hampshire College, Amherst, featuring Fady Joudah, Udi Aloni & Adina Hoffman.   Joudah’s The Earth in the Attic won the Yale Series for Younger Poets in 2007.   His translations of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry, The Butterfly’s Burden won the Banipal prize for Arabic literary translation from the UK & If I Were Another, won a PEN translation prize.   He is a physician working in Houston.  In 2002 & 2005 he served with Doctors Without Borders.   Aloni is known for his deeply psychoanalytic films & work in political theology.   Living part time in Jenin refugee camp he teaches film at The Freedom Theater in Jenin.   His film Forgiveness tells the story of David Adler, a 20-year old American-Israeli who decides to move back to Israel to join the military.   David ends up at a mental hospital, which was built on the ruins of the Palestinian village Deir Yassin, where a Jewish militia killed over 100 villagers in 1948.   Aloni’s book What Does a Jew Want: On Binationalism & Other Specters is forthcoming in May 2011.   Hoffman is the author of My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, & Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza.   One of the founders & editors of Ibis Editions, she divides her time between Jerusalem & New Haven.
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James Haug & Brandon Downing will read at Memorial Hall, University of Massachusetts.   Haug’s newest collection of poems is Legend of the Recent Past.   Previous collections include Walking Liberty, which won the Morse Poetry Prize, & The Stolen Car.   One of his three chapbooks, Fox Luck, won the Center for Book Arts chapbook competition.   He is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts & the Massachusetts Cultural Council.   Downing is a videomaker, visual artist, & writer.   His poetry collections include The Shirt Weapon, Dark Brandon, & Lake Antiquity.   An on-line gallery of much of his recent photographic work can be seen at www.brandondowning.org. A feature-length DVD collection of recent video works, Dark Brandon // Eternal Classics, was released in 2007.   Sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Visiting Writers Series.
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Bessy Reyna, Jessica Treat & Jan Conn will read from their recent work.   Reyna’s most recent poetry book is the bilingual collection Memoirs of the Unfaithful Lover/ Memorias de la amante infiel.   Her poetry can be found in numerous anthologies, including El Coro: A Chorus of Latino & Latina Poetry; In Other Words: Literature by Latinas of the United States; The Arc of Love: Lesbian Poems; & The Defiant Muse: Latina Feminist Poems.   Born in Cuba & raised in Panama, Reyna is a graduate of Mt Holyoke College & earned her Masters & Law degrees from the University of Connecticut.   Conn’s most recent book is Botero’s Beautiful Horses; a new book is forthcoming from Brick Books in fall 2012.   Her work is included in The Best Canadian Poetry in English Anthology, among other anthologies, & in many journals.   She is a member of the renga group Yoko’s Dogs.   She won the 2006 Malahat Review PK Page Founders’ Award Poetry Prize & a CBC Literary Award for poetry in 2003.  She lives in Great Barrington, MA, & works on the ecology & evolution of insects that transmit pathogens to humans.   Treat is the author of three collections of short fiction—most recently, Meat Eaters & Plant Eaters.   Her stories, prose poems, & translations have appeared in numerous journals & anthologies, including Ms.; Green Mountains Review; Quarterly West and American Literary Review.  A recipient of an Artist Fellowship Award from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, & the Dominion Review Fiction Award, Treat is Professor of English at Northwestern Connecticut Community College, where she coordinates the Mad River Literary Festival, now in its 15th year.
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Linda Pastan will read from her recent collection of poetry, Traveling Light.   Pastan is author of many volumes of poetry, including Queen of a Rainy Country & Carnival Evening: New & Selected Poems: 1968-1998.   Her awards include the Dylan Thomas Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award (Poetry Society of America), the Bess Hokin Prize (Poetry Magazine), the 1986 Maurice English Poetry Award, the Charity Randall Citation of the International Poetry Forum, & the 2003 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.   Sponsored by Amherst College’s Creative Writing Center.
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Richard Ellis will talk about his new book, Blinding Pain, Simple Truth: Changing Your Life Through Buddhist Meditation.   Drawing upon his experience with recurrent headaches, he will discuss how meditation can empower people who suffer from physical & emotional pain to let go of the image of themselves as victims & eventually to transform their suffering into healing.   One reviewer wrote that “this book is a mindful & wholehearted exploration of the nature of pain, suffering, & healing that reveals surprising discoveries of simple, yet challenging pathways to equanimity.” Ellis is a professor in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics, & an adjunct professor in the Department of Judaic & Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

All events will be at the University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center
  6:30 P.M.   Journal & Book Fair Opening Reception
  7:30 P.M.   Reading: Sommer Browning, Timothy Donnelly, Michelle Hoover, & Roy Kesey

All events will be at the University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center
  10:00 A.M.   Journal & Book Fair Continues
  10:30 A.M.   Editors’ Reading
  12:00 P.M.   Keynote Panel: Alice Quinn & Harold Augenbraum — moderated by Robert Casper & Brigid Hughes
  1:30 P.M.   Reading: Gina Apostol, Joseph Cardinale, Abraham Smith, & Michelle Taransky
  2:45 P.M.   Roundtables on Nuts & Bolts:
    From Manuscript to Book — moderated by Jensen Beach
    What’s about New Writing: How the Old & New Meet in New Literature — moderated by Noah Eli Gordon
  3:45 P.M.   Roundtables on Changing Conditions:
    Editing, Publishing & Promotion — moderated by Monica Fambrough
    To Make it Beautifully: Craft & Design in Book Arts — moderated by Betsy Wheeler
  7:00 P.M.     Journal & Book Fair Reopens
  7:30 P.M.     Reading: Cynthia Arrieu–King, Margaret Luongo, Travis Nichols, & Kiki Petrosino

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Join local author Robert Redick in celebrating the publication of Volume 3 of his stunning fantasy epic, The River of Shadows.   Following on the heels of The Red Wolf Conspiracy & The Ruling Sea, The River of Shadows charts the voyage of the Chathrand across the seas in a desperate bid to stop the sorcerer Arunis unleashing the Swarm of Night.   Redick works as the editor for the Spanish & French websites of Oxfam America & as an instructor in the International Development & Social Change program at Clark University.   His unpublished novel Conquistadores was a finalist for the 2002 AWP/Thomas Dunne Novel Award under the title Wilderness.
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Martín Espada will read from his new collection of poetry, The Trouble Ball.   Espada has been called “the Latino poet of his generation” & “the Pablo Neruda of North American authors.”   He has published more than fifteen books as a poet, editor, essayist & translator, including The Republic of Poetry, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; & Imagine the Angels of Bread, the winner of an American Book Award.   A Guggenheim & USA Fellow, Espada’s most recent collection of essays is The Lover of a Subversive is Also a Subversive.   A former tenant lawyer, Espada is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts.
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Meet Ellin Randel virtually through the power of Skype.   Randel will talk about & read from her book, A Secret Core of Joy.   Part memoir, part travelogue, part spiritual journey, A Secret Core of Joy is, more than anything, an inspirational manual for living.   In spare, honest prose, author Randel examines the people, places, & things that have made her life worth living.   In doing so she elicits the essence of what gives every life its bitter & its sweet, gently serving up wisdom & insight that stay with her reader long after the book has ended.   It is the rare memoir that manages to escape self-indulgence.  
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“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.

Updated 20 April, 2011Site MapWant to have an event?