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ListFest 2024 with book covers by participating authors, details below

Amherst College hosted the 9th annual LitFest, a literary festival celebrating fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and spoken-word performance, on February 22-25, 2024. Guest speakers included award-winning authors Natasha Trethewey, Paul Harding, Ed Yong, Blair Kamin ’79 P’15, Lisa Biggs ’93, and other distinguished editors and authors. 

Watch videos of the event »


Poem Schooled

Natasha Trethewey speaks in class while holding a book

Natasha Trethewey at LitFest 2024

For Litfest, Natasha Trethewey, the 19th United States poet laureate, spoke about form, function and plenty of feeling to a dozen poetry-loving Amherst students.

News Story

“Not Pandora’s Box—Pandora’s Chest of Drawers”

Aparna Nancherla ’05E at LitFest 2024

Aparna Nancherla ’05E described the process of writing her new collection of essays in a talk at Amherst’s ninth annual LitFest. She touched on her craft and her anxieties—and how, at age 11, she killed onstage doing a roast of Bollywood movies.

News Story
Aparna Nancherla and Jennifer Acker

LitFest 2024 Videos

Four videos from LitFest 2024: Readings by Alumni authors and interns at The Common; poet Ilya Kaminsky; comedian, author and actor Aparna Nancherla, and Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Ed Yong.

Between 2 Mammoths with Sarah Wu ’25

Season 2, Episode 10

Sarah Wu ’25, a computer science and English double major, talks with President Elliott about her experiences as an editor at the student-run literary journal, The Indicator, and as an editorial assistant at The Common where she helps to promote LitFest.

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.