• Tuesday, November 4th at 7:00pm (Reading)

Come to Fragmentation Magazine >'s combination writer's workshop & fundraiser!   Bring something to write with/on & support a brand new local literary magazine.  The event will feature exciting generative writing activities, exclusive (& really cool!) stickers & notebooks, themed mocktails, & a chance to learn more about a local publication & show your support.   The event is fully free, although we encourage attendees to donate or purchase merch!

• Wednesday, November 5th at 4:30pm (Book launch party)

Join Rick López, who teaches Environmental Studies, History, Latinx & Latin American Studies,   European Studies at Amherst College, in celebrating the publication of his latest book, Rooted in Place: Botany, Indigeneity, & Art in the Construction of Mexican Nature, 1570-1914.   He is also author of Crafting Mexico: Intellectuals, Artisans, & the State after the Revolution

• Wednesday, November 5th at 4:30pm (Talk)

Sheila Fitzgerald will talk about her new book, The Death of Stalin, as part of the CHI Wednesday Salon at The Aliki Perroti & Seth Frank Lyceum, 197 South Pleasant Street, Amherst College.   Fitzpatrick is a pioneer in the field of Soviet history.   She regularly contributes to the London Review of Books & is the multi-award-winning author of many books, including Everyday Stalinism, On Stalin's Team, The Russian Revolution, & The Shortest History of the Soviet Union.   For more information see here.

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

Madeline ffitch will read at the Old Chapel, UMass, Amherst as part of Art Sustainability Activism.   Ffitch is a fiction writer, essayist, & activist.   Her latest book, Stay & Fight, was finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction; was a Best Book of 2019 at Vulture, & a Publishers Weekly Book of the Week.   Ffitch co-founded the punk theater company Missoula Oblongata & is part of the direct-action collective Appalachia Resist!   Her writing has appeared in Tin House, Guernica, Granta, VICE, & Electric Literature, among other publications.   For more information, see here.

• Monday, November 10th at 7:00pm (Talk)

Amherst Cinema, 128 Amity Street, Amherst will feature the movie Clueless (1995) preceded by a seminar featuring Mona May, costume designer of Clueless, & author of The Fashion of Clueless, moderated by Anika Lopes, milliner & founder of Ancestral Bridges Foundation here in Amherst.   For more information about the program, see here.

• Thursday, November 13th at 4:30pm (Talk)

Philip Deloria will give the 2025 Kaplan Lecture in the Fine Arts Center Lobby, UMass, Amherst.   Deloria’s first book, Playing Indian traced the tradition of white “Indian play” from the Boston Tea Party to the New Age movement, while his 2004 book Indians in Unexpected Places examined the ideologies surrounding Indian people in the early twentieth century.   He is the co-editor of The Blackwell Companion to American Indian History (with Neal Salisbury) & C.G. Jung & the Sioux Traditions by Vine Deloria (with Jerome Bernstein).  His most recent book is Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract, which reclaims the Dakota artist’s work from obscurity, exploring her stunning portfolio through the lenses of modernism, industrial design, Dakota women’s aesthetics, mental health, ethnography & anthropology, primitivism, % the American Indian politics of the 1930s.

• Thursday, November 13th at 6:00 pm (Reading)

Layli Long Soldier will read in the Old Chapel, UMass, Amherst as part of the MFA for Program for Poets & Writers Visiting Writers Series.   She is the author of the chapbook Chromosomory & the full-length collection WHEREAS, which won the National Books Critics Circle award & was a finalist for the National Book Award.   She has been a contributing editor to Drunken Boat & poetry editor at Kore Press; in 2012, her participatory installation, “Whereas We Respond”, was featured on the Pine Ridge Reservation.   For more information about the event, see here

• Thursday, November 13th at 7:00pm (Talk)

Roger Reeves will read at The Aliki Perroti & Seth Frank Lyceum, 197 South Pleasant Street, Amherst College as part of the Amherst College Creative Writing Visiting Writer Series.   Reeves is the author three collections: Dark Days: Fugitive Essays, winner of the GLCA New Writers Award for Creative Nonfiction & a finalist for the 2024 Pegasus Award in Poetry Criticism; Best Barbarian, recipient of the 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize & the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, & a finalist for the National Book Award.   His debut collection King Me, won the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, a John C. Zacharis First Book Award, & a Library Journal Best Poetry Book of the year.For more information, see here.

• Tuesday, November 18th at 7:00pm (Talk)

Edward Tick will talk about his new book, Passage to Poros: In the Sanctuary of the Sea God.   In this book, Tick rediscovers asylia, the original practice of sanctuary that provides safety & inspiration while facilitating healing & connection to divinity.   Drawing on ancient traditions, Tick explains how we know ourselves, our destinies, & our connection to the divine through dreams, visions, oracles, & synchronistic events.   Tick is Founding Director of Soldier’s Heart: Veterans’ Safe Return Programs.   Honored for his groundbreaking work in the spiritual, holistic & community-based healing of veterans & Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Dr. Tick has been a psychotherapist for more than 40 years, specializing in working with veterans since the 1970s.  

• Wednesday, November 19 at 7:00pm (Reading)

CANCELED David Øybo will read from his recent novel, Juleboard: The Holiday Party.   Øybo offers readers a choice of how they wish to read this novel, which is part of a proposed trilogy.   Many chapters end with page indicators that allow readers to skip around the book & follow the story chronologically, or they can read straight through, from chapters focusing on each of the characters in their early lives to the evening of the Julebord.  The lengthy narrative is chock-full of engaging morsels, especially when characters pop up in each other’s chapters.  One person has a distinctive anatomical part that makes the character immediately recognizable, even when unnamed, & an intriguing recurring character has a connection to C.I. Redding.  The cast displays a variety of personalities & backgrounds; Jewish doctor Hanna Rønneberg suffers the loss of loved ones, & Dr. Pia Andersen is a loathsome, blatant racist.   Øybo, a doctor himself, fills the pages with jargon-laden descriptions of procedures, equipment, syndromes, & medicines.   Footnotes help with some of these terms, as well as Norwegian foods, locations, & slang expressions that readers may be unfamiliar with.

• Thursday, November 20th at 7:00pm (Reading)

Local author Corinne Demas will read from her latest novel, Daughters.   Demas is the award-winning author of thirty-eight books, including six novels (among them The Road Towards Home & The Writing Circle), two short story collections, a memoir (Eleven Stories High: Growing Up in Stuyvesant Town), a poetry chapbook (The Donkeys Postpone Gratification), a play, & numerous books for children (among them Saying Goodbye to Lulu, The Littlest Matryoshka, & The Perfect Tree).   Her short stories have appeared in more than fifty publications.   She is the editor of Great American Short Stories: From Hawthorne to Hemingway.