Annual Literary Festival

Thursday, February 23 - Sunday, February 26, 2023

Amherst’s 8th annual literary festival celebrates the College’s extraordinary literary life by inviting distinguished authors and editors to campus. This year’s lineup includes Pulitzer Prize winner Hilton Als; MacArthur Fellowship winner Valeria Luiselli, and 2022 National Book Award nominees Meghan O'Rourke and Ingrid Rojas Contreras, among others.

2022 LitFest

book covers, titles listed in the schedule below

LitFest took place on February 24–27, 2022, with a lineup that included Pulitzer Prize winners Natalie Diaz and Viet Thanh Nguyen; 2021 National Book Award nominees Katie Kitamura and Elizabeth McCracken; and journalists Vann Newkirk and David Graham, among others.

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.