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Amherst Books
8 Main Street  Amherst, MA 01002   ·  413.256.1547 ·  800.503.5865 · books @ amherstbooks.com   
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Events

< March 2025 >

Events listed in white are at the bookshop; events listed in yellow are elsewhere.

Unless noted otherwise all events at the bookshop are free & open to the public.   We recommend masks!

For events elsewhere, there may be vaccine or masking requirements.   Please follow the links to check.

Gamelan Lebdo Budoyo (GLB) is an ensemble dedicated to the study & performance of Central Javanese gamelan music.   Founded in 2024, GLB plays on a set of instruments made by master gongsmith Tentrem Sarwanto from the city of Surakarta in Central Java.  The group currently rehearses in Holyoke, MA.   Gamelan is a venerable music tradition of great sophistication & complexity.   Distinct forms of gamelan are exist throughout Indonesia, most notably in West, Central & East Java, & Bali. GLB plays Central Java gamelan, sometimes called karawitan, a tradition that occupies a place at the center of Javanese culture.  It is often performed as part of important social events & life cycle rituals, as well as wayang kulit (shadow theater) & tarian (dance).   As gamelan groups in Java do, GLB holds weekly playing sessions, not to prepare for concerts but simply to play music together.  Lebdo Budoyo translates as “skilled in artistic endeavors,” or more simply “we’re nuts for gamelan.”   Please don’t worry about walking around the bookstore or getting up any time.
LitFest 2025Debut Stories: Readings & Mingling with Amherst Alumni Authors & The Common student interns in the Friendly Reading Room, Frost Library, Amherst College.   Introductions & remarks by Sam Spratford ’24, literary editorial fellow of The Common.  Amherst alumni authors include Diane Exavier ’09, Lola Milholland ’07, Sarah Sawyer ’97, JinJin Xu ’17.   The Common interns: Alma Clark ’25, Aidan Cooper ’26, Sophie Durbin ’25, Kei Lim ’25, Sarah Wu ’25.   For more information, go to the LitFest web page.
LitFest 2025Novelist, Essayist & Photographer Teju Cole in Conversation with The Common Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Acker ’00 in Johnson Chapel, Amherst College.  For more information, go to the LitFest web page.
LitFest 2025 Dr. Anthony Fauci in Conversation with The Atlantic Editor-at-Large Cullen Murphy ’07 in the Johnson Chapel, Amherst College.  For more information, go to the LitFest web page.
LitFest 2025Phosphorescence Special Edition: A Poetry Event with Paisley Rekdal & Brandon Som in the Friendly Reading Room, Frost Library, Amherst College.  In partnership with the National Book Foundation & the Emily Dickinson Museum, moderated by Ruth Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation.  For more information, go to the LitFest web page.
Dennis Sweeney will read from & talk about his new book, How to Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Literary Magazines & Small Presses.   He will be joined by Yona Harvey & Zoe Tuck.   Sweeney, who teaches at Amherst College, is author of several books, including, The Rolodes Happenings & In the Antarctic Circle. Harvey is the author of You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love, winner of The Believer Book Award in Poetry, & Hemming the Water, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.   A Guggenheim Fellow, she lives in Northampton, Massachusetts where she is the Tammis Day Professor of Poetry at Smith College.   Tuck is the author Bedroom Vowel, Terror Matrix, & several chapbooks.   She is co-host of “The But Also” reading series with Britt Billmeyer-Finn & the co-editor of Hot Pink Magazine with Emily Bark Brown. She has been an active member of the Belladonna* Collaborative, where she has co-curated both the “Close Distances” & the ”In-Flux“ reading series.

Local authors Maria Heim & Jay Garfield will talk about their recent books.   Heim is author of Words for the Heart: A Treasury of Emotions from Classical India, a richly diverse collection of classical Indian terms for expressing the many moods & subtleties of emotional experience.   She teaches at Amherst College.   Garfield, who teaches at Smith College, but is leaving for Tasmania at the end of the semester, is author of numerous books, including Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self; with Maria Heim, How to Lose Yourself: An Ancient Guide to Letting Go; & with Shantideva, How to Be Caring: An Ancient Guide to a Compassionate Life.
Joan Kwon Glass will read from recent work at the CHI Think Tank, 197 South Pleasant Street, Amherst College as part of the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.   Glass is the mixed-race, Korean diasporic author of Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms (winner of the 2024 Perugia Press Poetry Prize), & Night Swim (winner of the 2022 Diode Editions Book Award), as well as several chapbooks.   Her books & poems have been featured on Poetry Daily, The Slowdown, & Rattlecast. Joan has been a finalist for the Poetry Northwest Possession Sound Series, the Tupelo Helena Whitehill Award, the University of Akron Poetry Prize, & the Subnivean Award
Bach in the Subways UMass students will play Bach as part of the international program.   For more information, see Bach in the Subways.
Surekha Davies will read from & discuss her new book, Humans: A Monstrous History.   Davies is a British author, speaker, & historian of science, art, & ideas.   Her first book, Renaissance Ethnography & the Invention of the Human, won the Morris D. Forkosch Prize for the best first book in intellectual history from the Journal of the History of Ideas & the Roland H. Bainton Prize in History & Theology. — Humans reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, & how they invented race, gender, & nations along the way.   With rich, evocative storytelling that braids together ancient gods & generative AI, Frankenstein’s monster & E.T., the books shows how monster-making is about control: it defines who gets to count as normal.
Local author Roger King will read from his new novel, Man Picks Flower in which Deva, a Brazilian nightclub singer, accepts a mysterious invitation to become the companion to a wealthy recluse living in a London penthouse.   King is an economist & novelist.   He has taught & worked in Africa & Asia for UN agencies.   King has written 6 novels, all of which have received praise from the likes of The New York Times & The Irish Times.   His fourth novel, A Girl from Zanzibar won the BABRA (now NCBR) Award for “The Best Novel of the Year.”

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