• Friday, October 7th at 8:00 P.M.(Reading)

“Live Lit”   Students in the M.F.A. Program at the University of Massachusetts will read from their recent work.   Evenings usually include a mix of poetry & fiction.

• Thursday, October 13th at 8:00 P.M. (Reading)

Salvatore Scibona will read from recent work.   Scibona is author of The End, which was a National Book Award Finalist & won a New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award.   His fiction has been published in Best New American Voices & The Pushcart Book of Short Stories: The Best Short Stories from a Quarter-Century of the Pushcart Prize.   Sponsored by the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.

• Friday, October 14th at 5:00 P.M. (Book launch party)

Join Amherst resident Joshua Goldstein in celebrating the publication of his new book, Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide.   Goldstein is author of numerous articles & books on international relations, including The Real Price of War: How You Pay for the War on Terror & War & Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System & Vice Versa.

• Thursday, October 20th at 8:00 P.M. (Reading)

Bradford Morrow & Lidia Yuknavitch will read at Memorial Hall, University of Massachsetts, as part of the University of Massachusetts M.F.A. Program’s Visiting Writers Series.   Morrow is author of several novels, including Almanac Branch, which was a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist; Trinity, which was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist; &, most recently, The Diviner’s Tale.   The recipient of numerous awards, he founded & edits the literary journal Conjunctions.   Yuknavitch is author of three volumes of short fiction, including Liberty’s Excess & Reel to Reel.   Her most recent book is a memoir, The Chronology of Water.   Sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Visiting Writers Series.

• Friday, October 21st at 8:00 P.M.(Reading)

“Live Lit”   Students in the M.F.A. Program at the University of Massachusetts will read from their recent work.   Evenings usually include a mix of poetry & fiction.

• Wednesday, October 26th at 5:00 P.M. (Book launch party)

Join Amherst resident Shirley Vernick in celebrating the publication of her new book, The Blood Lie.   Vernick is a journalist whose articles have appeared in national magazines, newspapers & university publications nationwide.   One of the highlights of her work was editing a journal that was distributed to all physicians in Russia; another, was developing an award-winning program to help doctors help their patients quit smoking.   Her new novel is inspired by what happened to a town in upstate New York when a Christian child disappeared the day before Yom Kippur in 1928, & a rumor started that Jews had kidnapped the child, murdered her, & drained her blood to use in their holiday foods.   Her own father's family was victimized by the events that followed.

• Thursday, October 27th at 8:00 P.M. (Reading)

Amherst resident John Clayton will read from his new book, Mitzvah Man.   Clayton is author of several novels including, Kuperman’s Fire, The Man I Never Wanted to Be & a collection of stories, Wrestling with Angels: New & Collected Stories.   His stories have appeared in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, as well as Commentary, Superstition Review, AGNI, TriQuarterly, & Sewanee Review, among other journals.   Mitzvah Man is about Boston businessman Adam Friedman, who goes a little crazy—or becomes a little holy—after the death of his beloved wife.   In a frenzy of mitzvot—good deeds, commandments—he saves lives & helps the needy.   His teenage daughter begins to wonder if there isn’t something more than a shared joke to the Mitzvah Man T-shirt she has designed for him....