8 Main Street Amherst, MA 01002 ·
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Events
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.)
- Wednesday, March 1st at 4:30pm (Book launch party)
Help us celebrate the publication of new books by Amherst College professors
Ingrid Nelson &
Krupa Shandilya! Nelson, who teaches in the English Department, is author of
Lyric Tactics: Poetry, Genre & Practice in Later Medieval England. Her colleague, Shandilya, who teachers in the Sexuality, Women’s & Gender Studies Department, is author of
Intimate Relations:
Social Reform & the Late Nineteenth-Century South Asian Novel.
- Thursday, March 2nd at 7:30pm (Reading)
Chris Bachelder &
Jacqueline Woodson in conversation at
Johnson Chapel, Amherst College, as part of this year’s Amherst College LitFest. Bachelder, who used to teach in the UMass M.F.A. program, is author of many novels including, most recently, The Throwback Special. Woodson is author of the classic young adult novel Brown Girl Dreaming, as well as the recent novel, Another Brooklyn.
- Friday, March 3rd at 7:30pm (Reading)
Zadie Smith will talk & read from her most recent novel,
Swing Time, at
Johnson Chapel, Amherst College, Amherst, as part of this year’s Amherst College LitFest.
- Saturday, March 4th at 10:00am (Talk)
Doris Kearns Goodwin in conversation at
Johnson Chapel, Amherst College, Amherst, as part of this year’s Amherst College LitFest. Goodwin is author, mostly recently, of The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, & the Golden Age of Journalism.
- Sunday, March 5th at 3:00pm (Poetry reading)
jubilat/Jones Reading Series at the
Jones Library, Amherst. Poets
Alan Felsenthal &
Rachel B. Glaser 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, March 8th at 8:00pm (Reading)
Amherst’s own
Sabina Murray will read from her new novel,
Valiant Gentleman. Murray, who teaches in the MFA Program here at the University of Massachusetts, is author of numerous novels & collections, including
A Carnivore’s Inquiry,
Forger, &
Tales of the New World. She has held Bunting & a Guggenheim felllowships & is winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Co-sponsored by the
Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.
- Thursday, March 9th at 3:00pm (Reading)
David Shields will read & talk from recent work. Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty books, including
Reality Hunger,
The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead, &
Black Planet. His latest book is
Other People: Takes & Mistakes.
- Thursday, March 9th at 8:00pm (Reading)
Mona Award &
Kenneth Calhoun will read in
Memorial Hall, UMass, Amherst, from recent work. Awad is author of the novel
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl. Her fiction has appeared in magazines & journals such as
McSweeny’s,
The Walrus,
Joyland,
Post Road, &
Maisonneuve. Calhoun is the author of the novel
Black Moon. Part of the
University of Massachusetts MFA Program’s Visiting Writers Series.
- Tuesday, March 21st at 12:10pm - 1:00pm (Noontime Book Discussion)
Michael Greenebaum will lead a discussion of Elizabeth Strout’s
My Name is Lucy Barton.
Amherst Books’ Noontime Book Group is a book group without fixed membership. If you would like to chat about a book join us for that month. If you can, purchase your copy from Amherst Books with a 10% discount. The group meets on the second Tuesday of every month. (This ends up being the 3rd Tuesday because of last week’snowstorm.)
- Tuesday, March 21st at 5:00pm (Reading)
Marcia Butler will read from her brand new memoir,
The Skin Above My Knee. Butler’s memoir, Andre Dubus III observes, “carries us not only into the mesmerizingly compelling world of a professional oboist, it also takes us into her love-starved childhood, her self-destructive young adulthood, & a descent into a solitary darkness that only her art can save her from; Marcia Butler has composed her own music here, & it is filled with passion & yearning and ultimately the kind of beauty that can save us all. This is a gorgeous book.’
- Wednesday, March 22nd at 8:00pm (Reading)
Actor, comedian, author,
James Hannaham will read from recent work. Hannaham is author of two novels,
God Says No & the recent
Delicious Foods. Co-sponsored by the
Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.
- Tuesday, March 28th at 5:00pm (Book launch party)
Join editor
Sara Lennox & contributor
Christian Rogowski in celebrating the publication of
Remapping Black Germany: New Perspectives on Afro-German History, Politics, & Culture. Lennox is professor emerita of German studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst & author of
Cemetery of the Murdered Daughters: Feminism, History, & Ingeborg Bachmann. Rogowski is editor of
The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema: Rediscovering Germany’s Filmic Legacy.
Remapping Black Germany collects thirteen pieces that consider the wide array of issues facing Black German groups & individuals across turbulent periods, spanning the German colonial period, National Socialism, divided Germany, & the enormous outpouring of Black German creativity after 1986.
- Wednesday, March 29th at 7:30pm (Reading)
Robert & Mary Bagg will read from & talk about their new book,
Let Us Watch Richard Wilbur: A Biographical Study — the first biography of a major twentieth-century American poet. Robert Bagg is professor emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a poet, & a translator; Mary Bagg is a freelance editor. Of the biography, Tracy Kidder wrote, “This book tells the story of a fascinating & deeply civilized life, the life of the poet Richard Wilbur. It rests on long & deep research. It is well & succinctly told. And it is a true critical biography, which slights neither the subject’s life nor his work, but presents them as an integrated whole. Richard Wilbur, now in his middle nineties, will live on among the great American poets, & this biography rises to its transcendent subject.”
- Thursday, March 30th at 8:00pm (Poetry reading)
Scholar & poet
Fred Moten will read in
Memorial Hall, UMass, Amherst. Moten is author of scholarly studies, including
The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study; as well as numerous collections of poetry, most recently,
The Service Porch. Part of the
University of Massachusetts MFA Program’s Visiting Writers Series.