Celebrate Literature Downtown with the Amherst Lit Walk
Source: Massachusetts Center for the Book
The Massachusetts Center for the Book and the Amherst Business Improvement District are partnering with downtown businesses and organizations to sponsor the Amherst Lit Walk which will provide a day of author readings, poetry, local history, giveaways, and more, in celebration of Amherst’s rich literary community in Downtown Amherst on Saturday, April 11. Events begin at 11 a.m. and run until 7:30 p.m.
The Lit Walk will feature readings from local authors such as Angela DiTerlizzi, Margot Livesy, and Jordy Rosenberg, as well as workshops and readings in partnership with the Emily Dickinson Museum, Amherst Historical Society, the UMass MFA Program, The Common, UMass Downtown, and local literary magazines and publishers.
Registration for the Amherst Lit Walk is available via Eventbrite. Pick up a map at participating locations. All events are free to attend (though donations/purchases are welcome). Collect at least 4 stickers at events throughout the day, and hand in your completed map to any MCB staff to be entered into a raffle to win some bookish goodies! More information at the Amherst Lit Walk website
Schedule of Events
11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. – Dickinson’s Ceaseless Sympathy: A Tour of West Cemetery– hosted by Amherst Historical Society, West Cemetery (Meet at 45 Boltwood Walk)
Explore Amherst’s historic West Cemetery through the lens of Emily Dickinson’s condolence letters with guide Sarah Zureick-Brown, a trustee of the Amherst Historical Society and the creator of The Silent Sod. During this 75-minute tour, you’ll meet Dickinson’s local contemporaries to whom she expressed grief and solace in her letters, and you’ll also be introduced to some of Amherst’s other literary legends.
* Note: The distance covered will be roughly one mile with some uneven terrain. There is no seating available at the cemetery.
11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. – “The Marvelous Now” Storytime with Angela DiTerlizzi and family yoga with Angelica Lopez– hosted by Mass Center for the Book, UMass Downtown (108 N. Pleasant St.)
Join local bestselling author Angela DiTerlizzi in a special storytime with her latest book The Marvelous Now. This calming companion to the bestselling The Magical Yet and The Curious Why is a marvelous introduction for young readers to mindfulness and keeping your cool. Following the storytime will be a family yoga session to practice some of these mindfulness concepts with local family yoga instructor Angelica Lopez. A book signing will follow, and Amherst Books will be on site with copies available for purchase.
Angela DiTerlizzi is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who delights in writing rhythmic, charming picture books to be enjoyed and shared by both parents and children alike. She and her husband, bestselling author/illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi, reside with their daughter, Sophia, and their rescue dogs, Mimi and Pippin, in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Angelica Lopez is a 500-hour trauma-informed yoga instructor who discovered both yoga and books as sources of comfort, imagination, and grounding in childhood. Today, Angelica offers gentle, accessible yoga experiences and is especially excited to share the joy of yoga and stories with young people through playful, welcoming classes that encourage curiosity, connection, and self-expression. Learn more at mitrahealing.com.
12 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.- Local Press & Lit Mag Fair– hosted by Mass Center for the Book, the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst – Social Hall (121 N Pleasant St.)
Browse and purchase books and literary magazines from some of Western Massachusetts’s leading presses and publications, including Amherst College Press, Orion Magazine, Restless Books, Storey Publishing, The Common, The Massachusetts Review, UMass Press, and White Goat Press. Discover new titles, pick up recent issues, and support the region’s vibrant literary scene all in one place.
Mass Center for the Book will also be tabling to share information about our statewide literary programs, including the Mass Book Awards, Letters About Literature, the statewide Reading Challenge, and more. Stop by the MCB table to receive your Lit Walk sticker for attending the fair.
12:15 – 1:15 PM – Workshop: Poetry of Motion (Max capacity 12)– hosted by The Common, The Inn on Boltwood – Amherst Boardroom (30 Boltwood Ave.) (Registration Required)
In this creative writing workshop, we will focus on motion. When we consider a single motion that we do in our everyday life, a simple act like nodding or skipping, how do we describe it? When we use language to capture it, that language opens up a world of comparisons. What else would we use this word to describe? Where else do we see this motion? What do we learn about ourselves when we consider that leaves nod in the wind or that a record can skip? The workshop will begin by reading and analyzing a poem as a group. We will closely examine how the poet creates different images around a single motion, what these images reveal about one another, and how they affect the reader. After this, we’ll write our own poems, paying similar attention to the various ways a motion can be expressed. No prior experience reading or writing poetry is required!
About the Facilitators
Luchik Belau-Lorberg is an editorial assistant at The Common and a student at Amherst College. An English-Russian bilingual, Luchik appreciates the textures of language and has, since his arrival at Amherst, written many things. A Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought major, Luchik is somewhat interested in poetry and other dense texts. Outside the stacks, Luchik can be found singing bass in the Amherst College Zumbyes, cycling, or sleeping. He also has hair now.
Ben Tamburri is an editorial assistant at The Common and a junior English major at Amherst College. While he primarily studies literature, enjoying any novel with a duel or party scene, Ben also writes his own fiction and poetry, usually about birds or children or plants. When he isn’t trying to map the events of a classic novel onto his own life, you can find him stomping around outside, DJing a WAMH radio show, or working on a puzzle.
1:30 – 2:30 p.m. – “The Road from Belhaven”: A Reading by Margot Livesey– hosted by Mass Center for the Book, the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst – Sanctuary (121 N Pleasant St.)
Author Margot Livesey will read from her Massachusetts Book Award-honored novel The Road from Belhaven. She will share reflections on the book’s origins and craft, followed by a brief discussion and audience Q&A. A book signing will follow, and Amherst Books will be on site with copies available for purchase.
The Road from Belhaven is a richly imagined historical novel inspired by Livesey’s mother and her “gift of second sight.” Set in late nineteenth-century Scotland, the book illuminates the social constraints faced by women while paying homage to the classic novels that shaped Livesey’s literary imagination. Blending careful historical detail with a subtle strain of magical realism, the novel explores questions of fate, free will, and feminine agency, suggesting that even the most grounded realities are touched by mystery.
Margot Livesey grew up at a boys’ boarding school in the Scottish Highlands, where her father taught and her mother worked as the school nurse. She is the author of nine novels, including Eva Moves the Furniture, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Mercury, and The Boy in the Field, as well as The Road from Belhaven, which received Fiction Honors in the Mass Book Awards. Her nonfiction book The Hidden Machinery, a collection of essays on writing, was published by Tin House Books. Livesey has taught at numerous institutions, including Boston University, Emerson College, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she currently teaches. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the N.E.A., and other organizations, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1:30 – 2:45 p.m. – “Vesuvius at Home”: A Poetry Workshop Responding to Emily Dickinson and Objects from the Amherst History Center (Max capacity 12)– hosted by the Emily Dickinson Museum, Amherst History Center (45 Boltwood Walk) (Registration Required)
Presented by the Emily Dickinson Museum, this writing workshop with Jan Freeman explores poems by Dickinson and objects from the collection of the Amherst Historical Society that will help participants express emotions, memories, and observations about home. Participants will engage in exercises that open their perceptions and strengthen their use of personal details as metaphor. Experienced and inexperienced poets will open their imaginations and express their unique truths. Prompts will be provided. Recommended for writers age 17+.
About the facilitator: Jan Freeman is the recipient of a 2026 Massachusetts Cultural Council Individual Artist Grant and the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Blue Structure (Calypso Editions) and a chapbook. Her poems are forthcoming or recently appeared in Patterson Review, Ploughshares, Plume, POETRY, Salamander, Tar River Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She was founding director of Paris Press, where she published Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Correspondence With Susan Huntington Dickinson. She directs the MASS MoCA Writing Through Art Poetry Retreats. www.janfreeman.net
3 – 4:15 p.m. –Live Lit: Readings by students in the UMass MFA for Poets & Writers – hosted by the UMass MFA for Poets & Writers, Masuda’s Cafe (17 Kellogg Ave.)
Live Lit is is the premier literary performance event run entirely by graduate students of the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA for Poets & Writers. This event will host 6 writers housed in the MFA, three poets and three fiction writers, as they read form a combination of new work and previously published pieces. Join the MFA as we present the new bleeding edge of contemporary literature!
3 – 4:30 p.m. –Battle of the Bookworms: A Bookish Trivia Challenge – hosted by Mass Center for the Book, Protocol (1 E Pleasant St.)
Bring your friends and get ready to go head to head with other readers during literary trivia! Teams of up to 6 are encouraged to work together. Literary trivia will consist of entertaining, often obscure, facts regarding books, authors, characters, and publishing history, designed to test and expand knowledge from classics to contemporary literature. Winning teams will receive prizes!
4:45 – 5:45 p.m. –“Night Night Fawn”: A Reading by Jordy Rosenberg– hosted by Mass Center for the Book, Amherst Books (8 Main St.)
Jordy Rosenberg will read from his new novel Night Night Fawn. He will speak briefly about the writing of the book, followed by audience Q&A. A signing will follow, and copies will be available for purchase.
In a cluttered rent-controlled apartment in the middle of Manhattan, Barbara Rosenberg is terminally ill, high on opioids, and writing the story of her life. She has opinions about her smutty late husband, her career as the receptionist for a disreputable plastic surgeon, her glory days as an accomplished jazzerciser, and her failed aspirations to be a film noir actress. But what she really wants to talk about are unhinged thoughts on gender, Karl Marx, Zionism, and her two great disappointing loves: an estranged trans son and a long-lost best friend whose betrayal haunts Barbara still. As she descends further into delirium and illness, Barbara finds herself in a nightmare from which she cannot escape, and her circumstances put her on a crash course with these intimates—or are they avenging nemeses?—once again.
Jordy Rosenberg is the author of the novels Confessions of the Fox (2018) and Night Night Fawn (2026) both from Random House/One World, as well as a scholarly monograph about 18th-century religious enthusiasts. Confessions of the Fox was a New York Times Editors Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a Publishing Triangle Award, the UK Historical Writers Association Debut Crown Award, and longlisted for The Dublin Literary Award. Jordy is a professor in the Department of English and Associated MFA Faculty in the Program for Poets and Writers at The University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
6 – 7:30 p.m. – Writers Reading: Anna Maria Hong, Eula Biss, James Hannaham, and John Hennessy – hosted by UMass Downtown, UMass Downtown (108 N. Pleasant St.)
Presented in partnership with the Amherst Business Improvement District, Writers Reading is a curated series featuring local authors. Join us for a line-up curated by Anna Maria Hong. Fellow authors Eula Biss, James Hannaham, and John Hennessy will join Hong in sharing selections from their work.
Books will be available for purchase. See author bios at umass.edu/downtown/news-events.
7:30 p.m. – Lit Walk Raffle– hosted by Mass Center for the Book, UMass Downtown (108 N. Pleasant St.)
Wrap up the day with the Lit Walk Raffle! Anyone who attends four or more Lit Walk events and collects the corresponding stickers in their map can turn it in to a Mass Center for the Book staff member at any time during the day to be entered to win prizes from local organizations and businesses, including the Boltwood Inn, Amherst Cinema, Emily Dickinson Museum, Restless Books, the Eric Carle Museum, and more.
The raffle drawing will take place live at the final event of the day. You do not need to be present to win—prize winners will be contacted to arrange pickup at the Mass Center for the Book office in Northampton—but we hope you’ll join us to celebrate the end of a wonderful day of literary events.
About the Massachusetts Center for the Book
Massachusetts Center for the Book (MCB) is a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring a love of reading, honoring the rich literary culture of the Commonwealth, promoting unrestricted access to books and libraries, and fostering literacy and learning. Founded in 2000, MCB is charged with developing, supporting, and promoting cultural programming to advance the cause of books, libraries, and reading in Massachusetts. As the designated Commonwealth affiliate of the Library of Congress, the Center runs youth and family literacy programs, like the Reading Challenge and Letters About Literature; represents Massachusetts at the National Book Festival; operates the Massachusetts Book Awards and Mass Kids Lit Fest; and partners with community organizations on literary initiatives and events, big and small, across the state.