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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

< October 2017 >

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

Unless noted otherwise all events are free & open to the public.

Jess Row will read as part of the the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.   Row is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Your Face in Mine, which the Los Angeles Times called “flat-out brilliant” & Vanity Fair called “a provocative and exhilaratingly bold examination of race in America.”   He is also author of the short story collections, The Train to Lo Wu & Nobody Ever Gets Lost.
Join Lisa Lieberman in celebrating the publication of her second Cara Waldron noir set in the 1950s, Burning Cold.   Trained as a modern European cultural & intellectual historian, Lieberman abandoned a perfectly respectable academic career for the life of a vicarious adventurer through dangerous times & places.   The Library Journal recently wrote, “Lieberman follows up All the Wrong Places, which reimagines the 1950s Red Scare in Hollywood, with this account of spies & the Hungarian uprising. Readers of Alan Furst’s spy novels may appreciate this fast-paced story.”
Help us celebrate the publication of a new book by University of Massachusetts professor Angélica Bernal, Beyond Origins: Rethinking Founding in a Time of Constitutional Democracy.   Bernal, who teaches political theory, specializes in issues of founding & refounding, popular constitutionalism, & indigenous rights & social movements in Latin America.
Amherst Books Noontime Book Conversation Johnstone Campbell will lead a discussion of Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson.   The Conversation is not a book group in the traditional sense: it expects readers to come & go as their schedules & interests allow.   If you can, purchase your copy from Amherst Books with a 10% discount.   The group meets on the second Tuesday of every month.   Feel free to bring your lunch; water will be provided.
Join us in celebrating the publication of a new book by Jamie Rowen—Searching for Truth in the Transitional Justice Movement.   Rowen, who teaches in the Political Science Department here at UMass, focuses on transitional justice, international criminal law, social movements, & international & comparative methods.
Robin Wright will participate in the third discussion of the "Trump: Point/Counterpoint" conversation series which features Amherst College Professor, & host of NEPR’s "In Contrast", Ilan Stavans & a guest engaging in thoughtful discussion & attempting to bridge the ideological divide growing in our nation.   Wright is a contributing writer to The New Yorker & a joint fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace & the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.   She is a former diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post.   Her most recent book is Rock the Casbah: Rage & Rebellion across the Islamic World.   For more information, go here.
Ocean Vuong will read in Memorial Hall, UMass, Amherst, as part of the University of Massachusetts MFA Program’s Visiting Writers Series.   Vuong, the latest addition to UMass’s MFA program, is author of Night Sky With Exit Wounds.   Vuong is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize, an American Poetry Review Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets, a Pushcart Prize, a Beloit Poetry Journal Chad Walsh Poetry Prize & the Whiting Award.
Help us say goodbye to long-term Amherst bookseller Mark Wootton.   Mark, who worked & owned bookshops in Kansas City & Boston, moved to Amherst & started Wootton’s in 1990.   He then worked for Atticus & co-founded Amherst Books in 2003.  Mark will be leaving the shop at the end of October.
jubilat/Jones Reading Series at the Jones Library, Amherst.   Zach Savich & Anaïs Duplan will read.   Meet the poets at an informal Q & A session that follows the reading.   For more information go to the jubilat Event page.
Gordon Lafer will talk in the 3rd Floor Conference Room, Gordon Hall, 418 No. Pleasant Street, UMass, Amherst, as part of a series entitled, “The Right Wing Assault on America: What Is It? How Can We Defeat It?”   Lafer is a political economist & is an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education & Research Center.   In 2009-2010, Lafer took leave from his faculty position to serve as Senior Labor Policy Advisor for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education & Labor.   His latest book is The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time.
Danez Smith will read at Hampshire College, Amherst, from their recent collection of poetry, Don’t Call Us Dead.   Smith is also author of [insert] Boy, winner of the Lambda Literary Award & the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; & the chapbook hands on ya knees.  Smith is the recipient of fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Cave Canem, Voices of Our Nation (VONA), & elsewhere.  They are a founding member of the multigenre, multicultural Dark Noise Collective.
Join us in celebrating the publication of a new book by UMass professor of political science, Jesse Rhodes—Ballot Blocked: The Political Erosion of the Voting Rights Act.   Rhodes’ areas of scholarly interest are social policy, voting rights policy, economic inequality, & political behavior.   His first book was An Education in Politics: The Origin & Development of No Child Left Behind.

Madeleine ("Maddy") Blais will talk about her new book, To the New Owners: A Martha’s Vineyard Memoir, & the new edition of her classic, In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle: A True Story of Hoop Dreams & One Very Special Team, about the Amherst High girls basketball team—the Lady Hurricanes—in the 1992-93 season.   Blais was a reporter for the Miami Herald for years before joining the faculty of the School of Journalism at the University of Massachusetts.   Aside from the two new books, Blais is author of Uphill Walkers, & The Heart Is an Instrument.
Ilan Stavans will read at the Jones Library, Amherst, from his edition of Neruda’s odes: All the Odes, to be followed by a discussion of the poems.   Stavans, who teaches at Amherst College, is a prolific essayist, translator, & short-story writer.   Aside from All the Odes, which he translated much of & edited, he is editor of The Poetry of Pablo Neruda & I Explain a Few Things: Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda.
Alice Nash in conversation as part of the Full Disclosure Festive: RADICAL INTERCONNECTEDNESS.   Nash, professor at UMASS, has received three grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, most recently Teaching Native American Histories, a Summer Institute for Teachers that met for two weeks in the Wampanoag homeland (Cape Cod & Marthar’s Vineyard) in July 2017.   Nash & co-director Linda Coombs (Aquinnah Wampanoag), in partnership with the Five College Consortium, worked with 24 teachers from across the country to explore the importance of place, identity, land, historical trauma, & how to find & evaluate teaching resources.
Emily Dickinson reading at bookstore
“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.
Alice Nash in conversation as part of the Full Disclosure Festive: RADICAL INTERCONNECTEDNESS.   For more information, see the listing for October 20th.
Immigrant students & alumni, some undocumented, will share their personal experiences & discuss their thoughts in an intimate setting—Holden Theater, Amherst College, in the fourth discussion of the "Trump: Point/Counterpoint" conversation series which features Amherst College Professor, & host of NEPR’s "In Contrast", Ilan Stavans & a guest engaging in thoughtful discussion & attempting to bridge the ideological divide growing in our nation.   Stavans is editor of, among many books, Words in Transit: Stories of Immigration & Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing.   For more information, go here.
Help us celebrate the publication of a new book by Laura Furlan — Indigenous Cities: Urban Indian Fiction & the Histories of Relocation.   Furlan, who teaches in the English Department at UMass, demonstrates in her new book that stories of the urban experience are essential to an understanding of modern Indigeneity.   She situates Native identity among theories of diaspora, cosmopolitanism, & transnationalism by examining urban narratives—such as those written by Sherman Alexie, Janet Campbell Hale, Louise Erdrich, & Susan Power—along with the work of filmmakers & artists.
Mary Jo Salter will read from her new collection of poetry, The Surveyors.   Poet, editor, essayist, playwright, translator & lyricist, Salter was editor at the Atlantic Monthly, poetry editor at the New Republic, & is winner of National Book Critics Circle Award.   She is author of eight volumes of poetry.   Co-sponsored by the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.
Join us in celebrating the publication of the bilingual book Poemas & Poems by local author Laura Rojo MacLeod.   MacLeod, from Argentina, is celebrating 10 years of quality bilingual activity in the Valley: teaching, translating & consulting.   Her areas of scholarly interest are Emily Dickinson, J.L.Borges, languages, education & the environment.   These topics are dealt with in her upcoming book about confluence of cultures.   She has published poetry, ecological handbooks & founded environmental groups in her homeland.   A brief Q&A will follow the reading then toast & treats from Argentina.
Acclaimed novelist John Crowley will read from his new book, Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr.   Crowley, who is author of numerous novels, including The Translator, Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, Four Freedoms, an edition of The Chemical Wedding: by Christian Rosencreutz: A Romance in Eight Days, Little, Big, which received the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel & has been called “a neglected masterpiece” by Harold Bloom, & his Ægypt series of novels which revolve around the themes of Hermeticism, memory, families & religion.   Ka tells the story of the first Crow in all of history with a name of his own, born two thousand years ago & through his adventures in Ka, the realm of Crows, & around the world, found secrets that could change the humans’ entire way of life— & now may be the time to finally reveal them.
Eileen Myles will read from their latest book, Afterglow (A Dog Memoir), of which the Kirkus Review wrote, “Myles’s work is a perfect example of what happens when you mix raw language with emotion, pets with loss, & sexuality with socioculturalism.   A captivating look at a poet’s repeated attempt ‘to dig a hole in eternity’ through language."   Myles has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, libretti, plays, & performance pieces over the last three decades.
Come to Amherst Books’ first Halloween Scary Story Contest.   Students — high school, undergrad, grad — submit your stories to contest1@amherstbooks.com by October 21st along with your name, the school you attend & your grade/year.   The winners will be announced in the store on Halloween @ 7:00pm.   The top five story finalists will read their stories to the delight & horror of all & the winner will receive a most shocking prize!   All stories must be under 5000 words & you must be in the store on the night of the event to receive your prize.
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