Amherst’s annual literary festival celebrates the College’s extraordinary literary life by bringing to campus distinguished authors and editors to share and discuss the pleasures and challenges of verbal expression—from fiction and nonfiction, to poetry and spoken-word performance.

This year’s festival features award-winning novelist Zadie Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, and 2016 National Book Award Fiction Finalists Chris Bachelder and Jacqueline Woodson, among others.