• Wednesday, November 2nd at 7:00pm (Talk & reading)

Amherst College professor Catherine Ciepiela will talk about & read from her recent translation of Polina Barskova’s Living Pictures —a dramatization of life under the German siege of Lenningrad during the Second World War.   Part of Amherst College’s Amherst College’s Visiting Writers Series, the reading will take place at the CHI Think Tank, Frost Library (2nd floor), Amherst College, Amherst.   Ciepiela is author, editor, or co-editor of several books, including The Stray Dog Cabaret: A Book of Russian Poems & Relocations: Three Contemporary Russian Women Poets.   (Barskova, is a Russian poet & scholar & teaches at UC Berkeley.)   N.B. Masks must be worn.

• Thursday, November 3rd at 6:00pm (Reading)

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah will read from recent work at the Old Chapel, UMass, Amherst, as part of the UMass MFA’s Visiting Writers Series.   Adjei-Brenyah is author of the recent short story collection, Friday Black, & the forthcoming Chain Gang All Stars.   His work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including Guernica, Compose: A Journal of Simply Good Writing, Printer’s Row, Gravel, & The Breakwater Review.   For more information about the event, go to the UMass MFA’s Visiting Writers Series page.

• Monday, November 7th at 7:00pm (Reading)

Dee Knight will talk about his Vietnam war resistance memoir, My Whirlwind Lives, with Greg Laxer, author of Take this War & Shove It!, at 601 Herter Hall, UMass, Amherst.   Sponsored by the UMass History Club.

• Wednesday, November 9th at 5:00pm (Reading)

Boris Dralyuk will read from his recent collection of poetry, My Hollywood & Other Poems, at the Amherst Center for Russian Culture, 202 Webster Hall, 21 Quadrangle, Amherst College.   Dralyuk is Editor in Chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books.   He is a co-editor of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry & is translator of Isaac Babel, Mikhail Zoshchenko, & others.

• Thursday, November 10th at 7:00pm (Reading)

Author, columnist, editor & all-around bonne vivante, Catherine Newman will read at The Powerhouse, Amherst College as part of Amherst College’s Visiting Writer Series, from her new novel, We All Want Impossible Things.   Newman is the author of the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness & Waiting for Birdy, the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night, & the best-selling how-to books for kids How to Be a Person & What Can I Say?, & co-author, with Nicole Blum, of the kids’ craft book Stitch Camp.   She is also Academic Department Coordinator for Creative Writing at Amherst College.   For more information, see here.   N.B. Masks must be worn.

• Wednesday, November 16th at 5:30pm (Poetry reading, talk)

“Myth as Method: An American Poet in Greece, Through Modern Crises”   Poet & translator, A. E. Stallings will talk about translation & read from recent work at the Integrative Learning Center, Room 40, 650 No. Pleasant Street, UMass, Amherst.   Stallings is translator of Hesiod & Lucretius, among other Classical poets.   She is author of several volumes of poetry, most recently, The Afterlife: Selected Poems.   She has been a winner of the Richard Wilbur Award, a Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, a Guggenheim, & a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

• Thursday, November 17th at 6:00pm (Poetry reading)

Poet & performance artist, Kyle Dacuyan will read from recent poetry at the Old Chapel, UMass, Amherst, as part of the UMass MFA’s Visiting Writers Series.   Dacuyan is author of the forthcoming collection, Incitements.   Published widely, Dacuyan is Executive Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s.   For more information about the event, go to the UMass MFA’s Visiting Writers Series page.