• Thursday, December 3rd at 8:00 P.M. (Reading)

Sam Lipsyte will read in Memorial Hall at the University of Massachusetts as part of the M.F.A. Program's Visiting Writer Series.   Lipsyte is the author of three books: Venus Drive; The Subject Steve; & Home Land.   His short story collection Venus Drive was named one of the top twenty-five books of the year by the Voice Literary Supplement.   His latest novel, Home Land, was awarded the first annual Believer Book Award, listed among the New York Times Notable Books of 2005.   His new novel, The Ask, will be out early in 2010.

• Friday, December 4th at 8:00 P.M.(Poetry Reading)

Charlie Bondhus will read from his recent collection of poetry, What We Have Learned about Love, which won BrickHouse Books’ 2009 Stonewall Series Chapbook Award.   He earned his MFA in creative writing from Goddard College in 2005, & is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he teaches writing & literature.   His poetry & fiction have been published in, among other places, The Harrow, Potter’s Field 3, The Starry Night Review, Swell, & Red Owl Magazine.

• Tuesday, December 8th at 8:00 P.M.(Poetry reading)

Daniel Hall, John Hennessy, & Mary Jo Salter will read as part the launch of the 2010 Alhambra Poetry Calendar.   Hall, who teaches at Amherst College, is author of three collections of poetry, Hermit Landscape; Strange Relation; & Under Sleep.   Hennessy, who has taught at Amherst College & at the University of Massachusetts is author a volume of poetry, Bridge & Tunnel.   Mary Jo Salter, who has taught at Mt. Holyoke Colllege & is now at Johns Hopkins University, is author of A Kiss in Space, Open Shutters; &, most recently, A Phone Call to the Future: New & Selected Poems.   The Calendar itself contains 365 poems by 362 poets, including Blake, Byron, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Kleinzahler, Pastan, Ellen Doré Watson, &, of course, Hall, Hennessy & Salter.

• Wednesday, December 9th at 5:00 P.M.(Book launch party)

Join us in celebrating the publication of a new book by Jennifer Fronc—New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era.   Fronc, who teaches in the History department at the University of Massachusetts, has published articles in the Journal of Urban History & the Journal of the History of Sexuality.   In her new book, Fronc reconstructs the process by which organizations like the National Civic Federation & the Committee of Fourteen generated data they needed to change urban conditions.   She shows how this information empowered government regulators in the Progressive era & beyond, strengthening a federal state that grew increasingly repressive in the interest of pursuing a national security agenda.   Revealing the central role of undercover investigation in both social change & the constitution of political authority, New York Undercover narrates previously untold chapters in the history of vice & the emergence of the modern surveillance state.

• Friday, December 11th at 8:00 P.M.(Reading)

“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.

• Sunday, December 13th at 3:00 P.M.(Poetry reading)

“Jubilat/Jones Reading Series”   Jennifer Kronovet & Caryl Pagel will read from their recent work as part of the jubilat/Jones Reading Series in the Trustees Room at the Jones Library, 43 Amity Street in Amherst.   Kronovet is the author of Awayward, which won the 2008 A. Poulin, Jer. Poetry Prize.   She is the co-founder & co-editor of the journal Circumference: Poetry in Translation.   Pagel’s poems have recently appeared in Gulf Coast, Gut Cult, notnostrums, Tarpaulin Sky, & Thermos. She is the author of a chapbook, Visions, Crisis Apparitions, & Other Exceptional Experiences , published by our very own Factory Hollow Press.  

The reading will be preceded by a ‘Poetry Swap' at 2:00 PM.

• Friday, December 25th at 3:00 P.M.(Fourth annual reading)

The Swiss writer Robert Walser died—of a heart attack, in a field of snow—on this day in 1956.   Walser (1878-1956) left school at fourteen & led a wandering, precarious existence while producing poems, essays, stories, & novels.   In 1933 he entered an asylum—he remained there for the rest of his life—& quit writing.   “I am not here to write,” he (apocryphally) said, “but to be mad.”

Besides basilopita (Greek New Year’s bread), there will be wine, seltzer, sweet & spiced things to be enjoyed during a brief reading / show & tell by members of The Robert Walser Society of Western Massachusetts, whose first Minutes Book, Catfish Po’ Boys, by former Amherst Books employee, Lewis Freedman, is just out: see it here.

For more information, Wandering with Robert Walser.