• Thursday, April 6th at 4:30pm (Book launch party)

Join Amherst College professor Javier Corrales in celebrating the publication of his latest book, Autocracy Rising: How Venezuela Transitioned to Authoritarianism.   Corrales is Dwight W. Morrow 1895 Professor of Political Science at Amherst College.   He is author of Fixing Democracy: Why Constitutional Change Often Fails to Enhance Democracy in Latin America, & The Politics of LGBTQ Rights Expansion in Latin America & the Caribbean, among other books.

• Thursday, April 6th at 6:00pm (Poetry reading & conversation)

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha & Cyrée Jarelle Johnson will read & talk on “Disability Justice in This Moment in Time” in the Main Lecture Hall, Franklin Patterson Hall, Hampshire College, Amherst.   Piepzna-Samarasinha is a nonbinary femme disability writer.   They are author of numerous books including The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes & Mourning Songs, & Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice.   Poet Johnson Cyrée Jarelle Johnson is a Hampshire alum.   He is the author of Slingshot which won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry.   Johnson was awarded a Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation & served as the inaugural poet-in-residence at the Brooklyn Public Library.   For more information go to the HampEngage site for this event.

• Thursday, April 6th at 7:00pm (Talk)

Angel Chen will talk at the Stonewall Center, 162-175 Campus Center, UMass, Amherst, about their book, Ace: What Asexuality Reveals & Desire, Society, & the Meaning of Sex.   Chen is a journalist & writer in New York City.   Her reporting & criticism have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Atlantic, Guardian, Paris Review, & elsewhere.   For more information on the event, go to the UMass events page.

• Wednesday, April 12th at 6:00pm (Talk)

Eric Schocket Memorial Lecture   Verónica Gago will talk in the Main Lecture Hall, Franklin Patterson Hall, Hampshire College, Amherst.   Gago is a leader in Argentina’s #NiUnaMenos movement (Not One More!), as both a theoretician & an activist.   She is the author of Feminist International: How to Change Everything, Neoliberalism from Below, & A Feminist Reading of Debt (coauthored with Luci Cavallero).

This lecture series honors the late Eric Schocket, who was a professor of American Studies at Hampshire before his untimely passing in 2006.

• Wednesday, April 13th at 5:30pm (Talk)

Troy Lecture Series Author Colson Whitehead will give the English Department’ 2023 Troy Lecture in the Campus Center Auditorium, Campus Center, UMass, Amherst.   Whitehead is author of numerous novels, including The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys, & most recently, Harlem Shuffle.   He is twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize; is a MacArthur, & Guggenheim Fellow, winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction & the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.   For more information & to register: UMass English Department’s Troy Lecture page.   Please note: autographed copies of some of his books will be available at the reading.

• Friday, April 14th at 4:00pm (Book launch party)

Join members of the Colectivo Relámpago/Lightning Collective in celebrating the publication of Zapatista Stories for Dreaming Another World by Subcomandante Marcos.   Members of the Lightning Collective, which is a translators’ collective of Zapatista solidarity activists based here in Amherst, include Antonia Carcelé Estrada, who got her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UMass in 2019.   She currently teaches oral & postcolonial literature at USFQ in Quito, Ecuador; Margaret Cerullo, who teaches sociology, feminist studies, & Latin American Studies at Hampshire College; Marina Kaplan, who is professor emerita of Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies at Smith College; & Zack Zucker, who is an ER nurse out of Turner’s Falls.

• Wednesday, April 26th at 7:00pm (Reading)

Vi Khi Nao will read in the CHI Think Tank (Frost Library, 2nd floor) as part of Amherst College’s Visiting Writer Series.   She is an interdisciplinary artist who works in multiple & interchangeable mediums.   Her work includes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, performance, film & cross-genre collaboration.   Her most recent collection of poetry is Fish Carcass.   For more information, see the Amherst College Creative Writing Center’s website. .

• Thursday, April 27th at 6:00pm (Talk)

Author & UMass professor Gretchen Gerzina will talk in Northfield‘s Trinitarian Church, 147 Main Street, about “Abijah Prince of Northfield: from Enslaved to Entrepreneur,” based on her book, Mr. & Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Family Moved Out of Slavery & Into Legend.   Sponsored by the Northfield, Massachusetts, Public Library.   For more information, see their website.

• Saturday, April 29th — Independent Bookstore Day

Independent Bookstore Day is a one-day party that takes place at independent bookstores across the country.   Every store is unique & every party is different—so sample a few!   At Amherst Books we’ll have exclusive books & literary items to give away & to sell, cookies, a raffle, special discounts, & everything in between.   It’s a celebration you won’t want to miss!