• Saturday, September 6th at 11:30am (Talk)

Eric Schwarz, author & Founding CEO of Citizen Schools, will talk & discuss the key themes raised in his new book, The Opportunity Equation: How Citizen Teachers Are Combating the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools in the Woodbury Room, Jones Library, Amherst.   Schwarz outlines how citizen teachers can help to close the achievement gap in our schools by sharing their expertise with students.

• Monday, September 8th at 8:00pm (Reading)

Amherst College English professor & novelist Judith Frank will read at the Alumni House, Amherst College, from her new novel, All I Love & Know—the searing drama of a modern American family on the brink of dissolution, one that explores adoption, gay marriage, & love lost & found.   Frank is also author of the prize-winning, Crybaby Butch.   Sponsored by the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.

• Wednesday, September 10th at 4:00pm (Talk)

Called “arguably the world’s most famous judge” in The Guardian, the famed South African judge Albie Sachs will give talk in the Integrative Learning Center, room south 331, UMass, Amherst on "The Value of Values: Lessons from the South African Transformation.”   See here for more information.

• Tuesday, September 16th at 8:00pm (Poetry reading)

Rowan Ricardo Phillips will read from recent poetry.   Phillips is the author of The Ground as well as the critical volume When Blackness Rhymes With Blackness.   He translated Salvador Espriu’s story collection Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth.   Co-sponsored by the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.

• Thursday, September 18th at 8:00pm (Reading)

Mitchell Jackson will read at Commonwealth College, Room 160 East, UMass, Amherst, from his new novel, The Residue Years, as part of the University of Massachusetts MFA Program’s Visiting Writers Series.   The Residue Years was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First novel prize, the PEN / Hemingway award for first fiction, The Hurston / Wright Legacy Award for best fiction by a writer of African descent; it was long-listed for the William Saroyan International Prize for writing & the Chautauqua Prize.

• Saturday, September 20th at 11:00am - 10pm (Poetry reading)

Amherst Poetry Festival will host a day-long reading series at the Dickinson Homestead, 280 Main Street, Amherst.   Poets James Tate, Martin Espada, Doug Anderson, Peggy O’Brien, & many others will read.   This is only one event in the weekend-long festival.   For more information go to Amherst Poetry Festival.

• Sunday, September 21nd at 3:00pm (Poetry reading)

jubilat/Jones Reading Series at the Jones Library, Amherst.   Poets Matthew Rohrer & Arda Collins will read.   Meet the poets at an informal Q & A session that follows the reading.     For more information go to jubilat/Jones Reading Series on Facebook.

• Monday, September 22nd at 5:00pm (Book launch party)

Join Ousmane Power-Greene in celebrating the publication of his new book, Against Wind & Tide: The African American Struggle Against the Colonization Movement.   Founded in 1816 with the intention to return free blacks to its colony in Liberia, the American Colonization Society was rejected by most black leaders, who feared that the organization actually sought forced removal.   As Ousmane Power-Greene’s story shows, these African American anticolonizationists did not believe Liberia would ever be a true “black American homeland.”   Power-Greene, who received graduate degrees here at the University of Massachusetts, teaches at Clark University.

• Wednesday, September 24th at 7:00pm (Reading)

Susan Power will read from her most recent novel, Sacred Wilderness.   Power is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.   Her first novel, Grass Dancer, received the PEN/Hemingway award for best new fiction.