Dan Bernitt: A Performance and Conversation
Wednesday, March 10
7 – 8:30 pm
Register in advance for this event:
https://amherstcollege.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0tdu-gpjgqH9FVhRifGtPpsW26YtoWG71u
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Please join us for award-winning playwright Dan Bernitt’s Phi Alpha Gamma and a conversation with poet and Amherst College professor Shayla Lawson. The play, which Bernitt will be streaming from an immersive home theater space complete with lighting and sound, explores masculinity, homophobia, and men’s relationships in a college fraternity.
Using the structure of a Greek tragedy, the performance weaves together the voices of four fraternity brothers as they grapple with the remnants of a hate crime and their own fears. Pioneer Press calls it a “MUST-SEE SHOW ... Bernitt's savvy script offers few easy answers and plenty of twists that toy with the audience's sympathies.”
Photo Credit: Deogracias Lerma
Elissa Washuta: A Reading and Conversation
Thursday, March 25th
7 – 8:00 pm
Register in advance for this event:
https://amherstcollege.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYoduqqrzItGt Q7now5cKbVHM6UEbhoIFeV
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the event.
Please join us. Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a nonfiction writer. She is the author of My Body Is a Book of Rules and Starvation Mode, and her book White Magic is forthcoming from Tin House Books in April. With Theresa Warburton, she is co-editor of the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. She’s a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship recipient, a Creative Capital awardee, and an assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University.
“Elissa Washuta is exactly the writer we need right now: as funny as she is formidable a thinker, as thoughtful as she is inventive—her scrutiny is a fearless tool, every subject whittled to its truest form. White Magic is a bracingly original work that enthralled me in a hypnosis on the other side of which I was changed for the better, more likely to trust my own strange intelligence.” —Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood.
Kazim Ali: A Reading and Conversation
Tuesday, April 13
A reading and conversation with multi-genre writer Kazim Ali, and a conversation between Ali and Amherst College Visiting Writer Thirii Myint. Ali’s books include several volumes of poetry, novels, essays, and translations. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books include a collection of three long poems entitled The Voice of Sheila Chandra and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water.
“Much of what the poet has presented to us is painful, yes, but it is also beautiful in how it uses voice as a symbol for continued imagination. Altogether, The Voice of Sheila Chandra is both an excavation and compilation of our survival.” – NPR