\]/ April 2026 Events
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Events
Zahid Chaudhary will be in conversation about his new book, Paranoid Publics: Psychopolitics of Truth with Arnav Adhikari & Rose Rowson at the Aliki Perroti & Seth Frank Lyceum, 197 South Pleasant Street, Amherst as part of the Wednesday Salon series.   For more information, see here.
Justin Driver will speak in Converse Hall, Amherst College, Amherst the fall of affirmative action.   Driver writes in his 2025 book The Fall of Affirmative Action: Race, the Supreme Court, & the Future of Higher Education that the 2023 Supreme Court decision Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard was a “calamitous decision [that] threatens to create a lost generation of Black students on the nation’s foremost campuses.“   For more information, see here.
The Office of Faculty Development will host a celebration of 20 years of the faculty Mutual Mentoring program at UMass, Amherst, at the Marriott Center (11th floor of the Campus Center).   The creator of this signature UMass program, Mary Deane Sorcinelli, Professor Emeritus & the founding Director & Associate Provost of the Center for Teaching & Learning, will be honored.   There will be a talk by Beronda Montgomery, Professor of Biology at Grinnell College & national mentor training specialist & consultant, about her new book, When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, & America’s Black Botanical Legacy.   For more information, see here.
Devon Walker-Figueroa will read at the CHI Think Tank, Aliki Perroti & Seth Frank Lyceum, 197 South Pleasant Street, Amherst as part of the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.   Walker-Figueroa is author of Lazarus Species, & Philomath, a winner of the National Poetry Series & a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award.   Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Nation, New York Review of Books, Poetry American Poetry Review, & elsewhere.   For more information, see here.
Jill Schulman will talk at the Jones Library, 101 University Drive, Amherst, about “College Admissions without Anxiety.”   Schulman is the author of, most recently, College Essay Confidence, & College Admissions Cracked.  The founder of In Other Words, a college essay coaching service, she counsels students applying to a wide array of colleges & has evaluated thousands of applications for top college admissions offices.   Shulman has taught writing at The New School, City University of New York, & New York University, & has been featured in Forbes, LA Times, The New York Times, & Parents.   For more information, see here


Join us in celebration of the release of Elizabeth Zuba’s poetry collection, Where is Everyone!, winner of the 2024 Conduit Minds on Fire Book Prize—featuring Zuba, Dara Barrois/Dixon, & Juliana Ward.   Barrois/Dixon has been making poems since before she could read.   Her first book, Blood, Hook & Eye was runner-up for the 1977 Yale Younger Poets prize.   Her personal favorites are her first, & Voyages in English, Hat on a Pond, Reverse Rapture, You Good Thing, Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina, & her latest, Extremely Expensive Mystical Experiences for Astronauts.   Zuba is the author of three books of poetry—Where Is Everyone!, Decoherent the Wing’ed, & the chapbook May Double as a Whistle. She is the translator of multiple artist’s books from the Spanish, French, & Portuguese, including several by Marcel Broodthaers.   She was the recipient of the 2016 French Voices Award for translation, & her books on Ray Johnson, Not Nothing & Frog Pond Splash, were selected as NYT Best Art Books of the Year in 2014 & 2020.   Ward, who lives in Northampton & teaches here at UMass, is the author of the chapbooks, Venus In November, & mostly recently, Braven Dungeons.
Loretta Ross & Marlene Freid will give the Opening Plenary talk at the The Collective Power for Reproductive Justice conference at Hampshire College.   Freid & Ross are authors of numerous books on reproductive justice, including their latest, Abortion & Reproductive Justice: The Essential Guide to Winning Rights.   Register Now.
The Mass Center for the Book & the Amherst Business Improvement District are partnering with downtown businesses & organizations to provide a day of author readings, poetry, local history, workshops, giveaways, & more!   Sarah Zureick-Brown, Angela DiTerlizzi, Angelica Lopez, Luchik Belau-Lorberg, Ben Tamburri , Margo Livesey, Jan Freeman, Jordy Rosenberg (here at 4:30), Anna Maria Hong, Eula Biss, James Hannaham, & John Hennessy, will all be participating.   To see the schedule, go here.
Charlene Carruthers, author of will talk about “We Keep Us Safe: Liberatory Practices for Collective Survival.” as part of the The Collective Power for Reproductive Justice conference.   Carruthers is a black queer feminist activist & author whose work focuses on leadership development.   Carruthers has worked with high-profile activist organizations including Color of Change & Women’s Media Center, & she was an integral founding member of Black Youth Project 100.   Her latest book is Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, & Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements.  Register Now.
Zukiswa Mhlongo will read from her debut collection of poetry, Museum of Sex.   Mhlongo, who also goes by Zuki, is a 22 year old art-tivist studying African Feminist Activist Storytelling at Hampshire College.   When she isn’t in class or working at the Center for Feminisms as a student coordinator, she is engaging in writers, playmakers, creatives & filmmaker spaces.   She has a podcast, Radio_S_A_Y, a substack @zukiswamhlongo, a letterboxd at ZukiM, & a subscription to A Four Chambered Heart, like all other sapphic alternative artisy thotty thought daughters in their 20s.
Samuel Huneke, an award-winning historian of Modern Europe, will talk in Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115), Amherst College, about his new book, I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany   Huneke is author of several books, including States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship & Democracy in Cold War Germany & A Queer Theory of the State.   For more information, see here
Local author, Jennifer Acker, will from her new novel, Surrender—set in a fictionalized Montague—at the Montague Center Branch Library, 17 Center St, Montague, as part of their Local Author Series.   Acker is founder & Editor in Chief of The Common.   She is also author of the highly praised novel, The Limits of the World.
Local author, Jennifer Acker, will from her new novel, Surrender, at the CHI Think Tank, Aliki Perroti & Seth Frank Lyceum, 197 South Pleasant Street, Amherst as part of the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.   Acker '00 is founder & Editor in Chief of The Common.   She is also author of the novel, The Limits of the World.

Translators Elizabeth Lowe & Suzanne Jill Levine will talk about translation & their new memoirs at Events Hall, Commonwealth Honors College, UMass, Amherst —Lowe’s Translating from the Portuguese: A Life Translated & Levine’s Unfaithful: A Translator’s Memoir.   Lowe was the founding director of the Center for Translation Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, & has taught & lectured on translation at universities throughout the United States, South America, China & Europe.   She is a specialist in translation pedagogy & theory.   A literary translator, she translates Luso-Afro-Brazilian fiction, as well as works from Latin American & peninsular Spanish.   The Brazilian Academy of Letters recognized her translation of the canonical work Os Sertões by Euclides da Cunha (Backlands: The Canudos Campaign).   Levine is an American writer, poet, literary translator, & scholar.   her books include one of the first studies of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude & Adolfo Bioy Casares, both published in Spanish.   She is also a leading specialist in Translation Studies & Comparative Literature.   Her 1991 book, The Subversive Scribe, was influential on the development of translation theory in the United States & elsewhere.  She has written two poetry chapbooks & hundreds of essays in major anthologies & journals.   She is a translator of a range of writers including Silvina Ocampo, Clarice Lispector, Cecilia Vicuña, Jorge Luis Borges, Manuel Puig, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Carlos Fuentes, José Donoso, Julio Cortázar & Guillermo Cabrera Infante.   For more information go here.
Cavar & Niamh Timmons will read from recent work.   Cavar is a transMad / queercrip / anti-genre writer, editor, & educator.   They hold a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of California, Davis, & are the author of Failure to Comply & Differential Diagnosis.   They edit manywor(l)ds.place, & has had work featured in Electric Lit, The Rumpus, Split Lip Magazine, & elsewhere.   Timmons is a non-binary queer disabled poet, scholar, visual artist, & musician based in western Massachusetts.   Their creative work has been published in Sinister Wisdom, The Oat Bag Comic Magazine, & Disabled Voices: An Anthology.   They’re currently an MFA student in the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University & teach as a Lecturer in the Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies program at UMass.
Selma Asotić will read from recent work in discussion with Abigail Chabitnoy.   Sarajevo-born, bilingual writer, Asotic earned dual BA degrees in English Language & Literature & Comparative Literature from the University of Sarajevo, & an MFA in poetry from Boston University, where she worked closely with Robert Pinsky.   She’s interested in poetry & revolution.   She’s taught writing to undergraduates at BU & NYU, & ESL to adult learners at community-based organizations in Sarajevo & New York.   She’s also worked as a translator & interpreter.   Her first book of poetry, now in English as Say Fire was published in both Serbia & Bosnia & Herzegovina in April 2022 & was awarded the Stjepan Gulin Prize in 2022 & the tefica Cvek Prize in 2023.

Two local poets—Eileen Kennedy & Sharon Tracey—will read from their recent books.   Kennedy is the author of three collections of poetry: Banshees, which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize & won Second Prize in Poetry from the Wordwrite Book Awards; Touch My Head Softly, a finalist for the International Book Awards in General Poetry, of which Literary Titan said, “emotionally-charged poetry that explores life with observant poems that will appeal to anyone who loves inspired poetry;” most recently, Dread & Splendor: Paintings & Poems for a New Earth, which includes art by Irene Christensen.   Tracey, is a poet & editor based in western Massachusetts.   Her latest poetry collection Land Marks.   She is also the author of Chroma: Five Centuries of Women Artists & What I Remember Most is Everything.   Her poems have appeared in Radar Poetry, Lily Poetry Review, Terrain.org, The Banyan Review, & elsewhere.




... still more to come ...!

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