• Friday, April 1st at 5:00pm (Book launch party)

Help us celebrate the publication of a new book by Sam Redman, Bone Rooms From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums—which tells the story of how human remains became highly sought-after artifacts for both scientific research & public display.   Redman teaches in the History Department here at the University of Massachusetts.

• Saturday, April 2nd at 2:00pm (Talk)

Marietta Pritchard will talk at the Jones Library, Amherst, about her book, The Way to Go: Portrait of a Residential Hospice, about the Hospice of the Fisher Home, here in Amherst, which cares for those in the last six months of life.   Pritchard, a well-known Amherst author & editor, started volunteering at the Fisher Home in 2007.   In her new book, Pritchard brings together excerpts from her journal, life stories of several residents, along with profiles of trained volunteers & the devoted professional staff.

• Tuesday, April 5th at 7:00pm (Poetry reading)

"Anne Halley Poetry Prize Reading"   Taije Silverman, winner of the 12th annual Anne Halley Poetry Prize, sponsored by the Massachusetts Review, will read from recent work.   Silverman is author of Houses are Fields, & has published poetry in Poetry, the Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Massachusetts Review, & AGNI, among others.  

The Anne Halley Poetry Prize is named in memorial for Anne Halley, to honor her 25 years of work as poetry co-editor of the Massachusetts Review as well as her work as a poet & writer.   Her last collection of poetry, Rumors of the Turning Wheel, was published by University of Massachusetts Press in 2003.

• Thursday, April 7th at 4:30pm (Talk)

Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o will give this year's English Department Troy Lecture in the Bowker Auditorium, UMass, Amherst.   Ngũgĩ is author of many novels, plays, short stories, & essays, ranging from literary & social criticism to children’s literature.

• Thursday, April 7th at 8:00pm (Reading)

Local & beloved author Catherine Newman will read from her new memoir, Catastrophic Happiness: Finding Joy in Childhood’s Messy Years.   Newman, who is the coordinator for the Creative Writing program at Amherst College, writes about kids, parents, teenagers, food, cooking, love, loss, gender, eating, death, sex, politics, books, babies, snakes, foraging, relationships, crafts, holidays, travel, & fortune telling for numerous magazines & on-line.   She is author of Waiting for Birdy & blogs at Ben & Birdy.

• Friday, April 8th at 7:00pm (Poetry reading)

John Hennessy & Daniel Tobin will read from recent work.   Hennessy is author of Coney Island Pilgrims & Bridge & Tunnel.   His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2013, The Believer, Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Harvard Review, The New Republic, The Huffington Post, & The Yale Review.   Poetry editor of The Common, he teaches at University of Massachusetts Amherst.   Tobin is author of 7 volumes of poetry—including, most recently, The Net & From Nothing.   Among his awards are the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry, “The Discovery/​The Nation Award,” The Robert Penn Warren Award, the Greensboro Review Prize, the Robert Frost Fellowship, the Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize, a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, & a fellowship in poetry from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

• Sunday, 10th at 5:00pm (Conversation)

Edie Meidav, author of Lola, California, & other novels, will talk with poet, novelist & biographer, Terese Svoboda, author of Anything that Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet, about Lola Ridge, an activist poet, a “prophet of today’s multiethnic world,” & an early feminist.   BOSTON REVIEW: “Lola Ridge: The Radical Modernist We Won’t Forget Twice”

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

Novelist Amity Gaige will read from recent work in Alumni Hall, Amherst College.   Gaige, who is about to finish her stint as a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College, is author of the novels, The Folded World, O My Darling, & Schroder.

• Tuesday, April 19th at 7:00pm (Reading & book launch party)

Jung Yun will read from her debut novel, Shelter.   Yun, who was in the M.F.A. Program here at UMass, has published in Tin House & The Massachusetts Review, among other publications.   The New York Times Book Review said, “Yun shows how, although shelter doesn’t guarantee safety & blood doesn’t guarantee love, there’s something inextricable about the relationship between a child & a parent…Shelter is captivating.”

• Wednesday, April 20th at 4:00pm (Reading)

Local authors Burleigh Mutén & Jane Yolen will read at the Jones Library from their books for children about Emily Dickinson.

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

jubilat/Jones Reading Series at the Jones Library, Amherst.   Poets Ana Bozicevic & Bianca Stone will read.   Meet the poets at an informal Q & A session that follows the reading.     For more information go to the jubilat Event page.

• Wednesday, April 27th at 7:00pm (Memorial poetry reading)

James Foley, poet, instructor, journalist, was killed by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014.   He was known & loved by many in the Valley while he was studying in the M.F.A. Program at UMass.   Yago Cura assembled a collection of ghazals (a kind of Middle Eastern lyric poem) in memory of Foley.   Martín Espada, Dan Mahoney, Andrew Varnon, Connolly Ryan, Brian Jordan, Daniel Johnson, & possibly Sejal Shah, among others, will read from the collection, Ghazals for Foley in his memory.   For more information, see this article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

• Thursday, April 28th at 6:00pm(Award)

Polly Longsworth & Aaron Lansky will receive the Jones Library’s third annual Samuel Minot Jones Award (the “Sammy”) for Literary Achievement at the Stirn Auditorium, Amherst College campus, Amherst.   The event doubles as a part of a capital investment campaign for the Jones Library.   For more information, go here.

• Friday, April 29th at 7:00pm (Talk)

CANCELED Benjamin Madley, a historian of Native America, the United States, & genocide in world history at U.C.L.A., will talk about his new book, An American Genocide: The United States & the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873.