Annual Literary Festival - February 23-25, 2024

Friday, February 23 through Sunday, February 25, 2024 Amherst College will host the 9th Annual LitFest, a literary festival celebrating fiction, nonfiction, poetry and spoken-word performance, along with the College’s extraordinary literary life. Guest speakers include award-winning authors Natasha Trethewey, Paul Harding, Ed Yong, Blair Kamin '79 P'15, Lisa Biggs '93, and other distinguished editors and authors. Check back often for schedule and speaker information. 

See highlights from the 2023 festival below.

LitFest Videos

Valeria Luiselli in Conversation with Jennifer Acker ’00

In this session, Valeria Luiselli and Jennifer Acker engage in a conversation about the fiction writing process. Watch more videos from LitFest 2023.

28 Students Wrote Poems Right on the Spot

Poet Victoria Change speaks to students in a writing session.

LitFest 2023

At her Litfest 2023 craft talk, the poet Victoria Chang shared works by Ross Gay and Terry Tempest Williams — then had the students create their own verse. In real time.

News Story
Hilton Als standing infront on a large painting, speaking to a group of people.

LitFest 2023 Slideshow

In February 2023, Amherst College’s 8th annual LitFest brought writers and readers together for three days of conversations and readings that celebrated literature.

Slideshow
A woman sitting at a table in a grey sweater and green scarf and wearing a face mask gestures with her hands while talking

LitFest 2022: Steering the Craft

Novelists Viet Thanh Nguyen and Katie Kitamura talked to students about creating characters, time frame, language, and more.

Slideshow & Story

LitFest is sponsored by the Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Amherst College, The Common magazine and The Emily Dickinson Museum and is made possible by the generous support of the Croxton Lecture Fund, established in 1988 by William M. Croxton ’36 in memory of his parents, Ruth L. and Hugh W. Croxton. Income from this fund is to be used to educate Amherst students and to bring attention to the College by virtue of the renown of speakers underwritten by the fund.