Amherst College posts videos from the various Lit Fest 2016 events. The videos feature Angela Flournoy, Lauren Groff ’01, Deborah Treisman, Harold Augenbraum and Jen Acker ’00.
NALINI JONES
The morning’s freshness had passed; the day taking shape beneath a thick rind of heat, birdcalls, road fumes, car horns, and street chatter from which occasionally a single voice rose. The banana man made his way down St. Hilary Road, stopping at one gate, then the next, his back bent beneath the bunches of fruit...
HANNAH GERSEN
I had been researching Jennifer Hex for nearly an hour before I realized she was someone I used to know. Her Instagram feed sparked my memory, a photo of her dressed in green and relaxing in the shade of a sycamore tree. The dappled light made her appear slightly younger, reminding me of the teenager I’d known. Jenny, I realized. I was looking at Jenny Heck. This long-haired, casually glamorous guru had once been the tall new girl who’d slouched down the halls of Lost Falls Senior High.
CLAIRE JIA
She opened the sliding door and stepped, precariously, onto the stone base jutting out forty meters above the ground. She surveyed the landscape of the subdivision before her: seven perfect obelisks rose in a cluster of glass and concrete, imperious in a sea of slightly shorter, slightly lesser buildings in the city beyond them. In the middle of the subdivision was a playground, a prerequisite for paradise, its clementine exercise bikes and shamrock swings providing whimsy and respite for child and adult alike.
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