• Friday, May 1st at 4:00pm (Reading)

Marietta Pritchard will talk at the Munson Memorial Library, 1046 South East Street, Amherst, about her new book, The Way to Go: Portrait of a Residential Hospice, about the Hospice of the Fisher Home, here in Amherst, which cares for those in the last six months of life.   Pritchard, a well-known Amherst author & editor, started volunteering at the Fisher Home in 2007.   In her new book, Pritchard brings together excerpts from her journal, life stories of several residents, along with profiles of trained volunteers & the devoted professional staff.

• Tuesday, May 5th at 7:00pm (Reading)

Lily Brooks-Dalton will read from her new memoir, Motorcycles I've Loved: A Memoir, the first draft of which she wrote while a student here at UMass.   Feeling out of place & out of sorts, Brooks-Dalton left home at 17 to work her way around the world.   Three & a half years later, after Ireland, India, Thailand & Australia, she found herself back in New England feeling in many ways even more lost than she had when she left.   Enter the motorcycle.   From the fiery electric blue Honda Rebel 250 that kicked her back into gear to the Magna 750 that would take her 3,000 miles through freezing rain over rough Southern terrain, & with several other beloved bikes in between, Brooks-Dalton’s determination to maintain a sense of momentum—regardless of the challenges ahead—will inspire.

• Thursday, May 7th at 7:00pm (Book launch party)

Join us in celebrating the publication of Robin McLean’s new collection of short fiction, Reptile House.   McLean, who received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts here in Amherst, won the 2013 BOA Editions Fiction Prize for this collection, & was a finalist in 2011 & 2012 for the Flannery O’Connor Short Story Prize.

• Friday, May 8th at 7:00pm (Reading)

Mojie Crigler will read from her memoir, Get Me Through Tomorrow: A Sister’s Memoir of Brain Injury & Revival.   Crigler’s fiction & nonfiction work have appeared or are forthcoming in Glimmer Train, Los Angeles Review, Drunken Boat, Hunger Mountain, The Rumpus, & The Believer.   Her plays have been produced & workshopped at the Magic Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Carnegie Mellon University, & New York Performance Works.   Crigler received the 2010 Howard Frank Mosher Prize for Short Fiction.

• Friday, May 29th at 7:00pm (Reading)

Susan Snively will read from her new novel about the love affair between Emily Dickinson & Judge Otis Phillips Lord, The Heart Has Many Doors: A Novel of Emily Dickinson.   Snively is a guide, discussion leader, & film script writer for the Emily Dickinson Museum.   She was the founder & first director of the Writing Center at Amherst College, where she worked from 1981 until 2008.   She taught courses in writing & autobiographies of women, & has published four collections of poems: From This Distance, Voices in the House, The Undertow, & Skeptic Traveler.