Today’s conversation with Jordy Rosenberg is many things but at its heart it explores the question of what it means to write revolutionary literature (or as Trotsky would call it “October literature”). Whether we are talking about trans horror or a Marxist surreal, the originating violence of early capitalism or writing toward utopian horizons; whether we are getting granular on the level of craft and form or looking more broadly at the role of art and artists, the question of how our writing can lend itself toward conjuring an elsewhere and otherwise is, I think, the animating force behind it all.
Jordy’s provocative choices in his latest novel Night Night Fawn bring these questions urgently to the fore as it centers and is narrated by someone whose worldview Jordy strongly opposes. Night Night Fawn is an opioid-addled, deathbed rant by one Barbara Rosenberg, a transphobic Zionist woman modeled after Jordy’s own mother. Barbara holds court not only on her life’s disappointments, but on Marxism and gender delivered through her cracked lens. All while her greatest disappointment, her transgender son, who may or may not want to kill her, visits her at her bedside. What opportunities, challenges and dangers does this approach create for a writer with revolutionary aims? How can looking back at originary violences, within a family or a nation or an ideology, be a liberatory act? And when confronting structural or familial violence, what is the role of humor and satire? Perhaps it is best summed up by Book Page in its starred review when they say Night Night Fawn is “comedic fiction as political firepower.” Don't miss this one! Link in my bio
#jordyrosenberg #nightnightfawn #confessionsofthefox
🌿 Next month! 🌿
Join us for our annual Literary Arts Festival
March 27-28, 2026
UMass Amherst Old Chapel
Two days of readings, panels, and conversations with internationally recognized authors, editors, and agents + alumni, current and prospective students
Free and open to the public
🌿 See you there! 🌿
English alum Robert Casper, MFA '04, has been named President and Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets!
Casper says, "I am eager to invite all Americans to connect to the living art of poetry, support poets as they shape the language of our time, and advocate for poetry’s critical role in our collective future."
Learn more on our website: https://www.umass.edu/english/news/academy-american-poets-names-robert-casper-mfa-04-national-leader-poetry-and-literary
#UMassEnglish #UMassHFA #UMassAmherst @umasshfa@umass@umassmfa
☃ THIS THURSDAY ☃
Join us for the final Visiting Writers Series reading of the semester with:
Jeff Parker
Old Chapel, UMass Amherst
6pm
☃ Jeff Parker is the author of several books including Where Bears Roam the Streets: A Russian Journal, the novel Ovenman, and the short story collection The Taste of Penny. His newest novella, G v. P, was published in the collection Proper Imposters by the University Press of Florida. He teaches prose in the MFA Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and he is the co-founder and director of the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal. ☃
“This brilliantly imagined tale of thorny friendship between two master storytellers is unlike anything I have ever read. A surreal road story brimming with metaphysical horrors and marvels, Jeff Parker’s G v. P gives us a darkly funny and deeply moving meditation on life, death, and art that you’ll never forget.”—Mona Awad, author of Bunny
"Jeff Parker’s 'G v. P' was the highlight of the collection. Elegant, with a magnetic narrative that begins—but absolutely does not end—with the mystery of the identities behind the titular initials, Parker’s tale is an absorbing study of a pair that are not quite friends, lovers, or enemies, but whose fates are undeniably entwined." -- Sam Spratford, The Common
☃
Reception to follow
Open to the public
See you there!
🍂 THIS THURSDAY 🍂
Layli Long Soldier
Old Chapel, UMass Amherst
6pm
Q&A to follow
🍂 A co-production with Arts Sustainability Activism @artsustainabilityactivism 🍂
Layli Long Soldier earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA with honors from Bard College. She is the author of the chapbook Chromosomory (2010) and the full-length collection WHEREAS (2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has been a contributing editor to Drunken Boat and poetry editor at Kore Press; in 2012, her participatory installation, Whereas We Respond, was featured on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In 2015, Long Soldier was awarded a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. She was awarded a Whiting Writer’s Award in 2016.
Long Soldier is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
WHEREAS confronts the coercive language of the United States government in its responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes, and reflects that language in its officiousness and duplicity back on its perpetrators. Through a virtuosic array of short lyrics, prose poems, longer narrative sequences, resolutions, and disclaimers, Layli Long Soldier has created a brilliantly innovative text to examine histories, landscapes, her own writing, and her predicament inside national affiliations. “I am,” she writes, “a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation—and in this dual citizenship I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly I must live.” This strident, plaintive book introduces a major new voice in contemporary literature.
Reception to follow
Open to the public
See you there!
🐍 THURSDAY 🐍
6pm @ the Old Chapel
Art Sustainability Activism presents a reading and Q&A with Madeline ffitch!
Madeline ffitch is the author of the short story collection Valparaiso, Round the Horn and the novel Stay and Fight, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Lamda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Washington State Book Award, the LA Times Book Award, and was the 2023 Ohio Center for the Book pick for the National Book Festival. She is the recipient of an O. Henry Award and her story "Seeing Through Maps" was chosen for the 2024 Best American Short Stories anthology. ffitch's writing has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, Granta, Tin House, and elsewhere. Her novel about Appalachian antifascism is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She writes and organizes in Appalachian Ohio.
In partnership with the Fine Arts Center, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and School of Earth and Sustainability.
📖📖 ONE WEEK FROM TODAY 📖📖
📖📖 New Location 📖📖
Join us for a reading with:
GARTH GREENWELL
Bernie Dallas Room (Goodell Hall)
UMass Amherst
October 23 @ 6pm
Reception to follow.
📖 Garth Greenwell is the inaugural Merry and Daniel Glosband Writer in Residence, a new residency program hosted by the UMass MFA. The Merry and Daniel Glosband Writer in Residence program brings renowned poets and writers to the UMass Amherst campus to work with creative writers in a weeklong intensive featuring craft talks, readings, and classroom visits. 📖
Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for many other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the LA Times Book Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
His second book, Cleanness, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and the Prix Sade, among others. A New York Times Notable Book, it was named a Best Book of 2020 by over thirty publications.
His new novel, Small Rain, won the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
His cultural criticism has appeared widely, and he writes regularly about books, music, and film for the Substack newsletter To a Green Thought. A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the 2021 Vursell Award for prose style from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he is currently a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.
SEE YOU THERE!
🍂 Announcing our Fall 2025 Visiting Writers Series! 🍂
Join us on Thursdays at 6pm throughout the fall for readings with:
ARIANA REINES (9/18)
GARTH GREENWELL (10/23)
LAYLI LONG SOLDIER (11/13)
JEFF PARKER (12/4)
Garth Greenwell is this year's inaugural Merry and Daniel Glosband Writer in Residence.
All readings will be held at the Old Chapel on UMass Amherst campus, 6pm.
See you there!
(The Visiting Writers Series is sponsored by the MFA for Poets and Writers and the Juniper Initiative, and made possible by support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the University of Massachusetts Arts Council, English Department, and the Merry and Daniel Glosband Writer in Residence Program. All events are free and open to the public.)
🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂
Celebrating our MFA alumni who read at the 2025 Juniper Literary Festival!
We hope you'll buy their books! Check out Amherst Books for more information: /, or shop at your local indie bookstore.
Alt text: four author photographs against a red background.
#writingcommunity #bookcommunity #writing #writersofinstagram
Want to learn more about publishing and editing? Join us for this free panel discussion on Saturday, April 5th at 3:30pm, Herter Hall room 231, UMass Amherst. We are excited to hear from these publishing industry experts:
* Lauren Christensen, editor at the New York Times Book Review, and author of the memoir "Firstborn"
* Lily Dolin, Associate Agent at Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc
* Nadxieli Nieto, Editorial Director, Algonquin, Co-editor, Gigantic Books, Board Member, Latinx in Publishing
* Suzanna Tamminen, Director and Editor-in-Chief at Wesleyan University Press
Alt text: panelists' photographs against a red background.
#writingcommunity #publishing #writing
The Juniper Literary Festival is this weekend! Join us on Friday, April 4th and Saturday, April 5th for readings and a publishing panel. All events are free and open to the public:
Friday, April 4 - Bernie Dallas Room, Goodell Hall
* 5:00 | Welcome Reception
* 6:00 | MFA Faculty Reading with Desiree C. Bailey and Gabriel Bump
* 7:00 | Reception and Book Signing
* 7:30 | Live Lit featuring MFA for Poets & Writers candidates Bec Bell-Gurwitz, Noah Hale, Shaina Isaacsen, Hunter Larson, Sophia Lauer, and Vika Mujumdar
Saturday, April 5 - Herter Hall 231
* 3:30 | Editors & Publishing Panel with Lily Dolin, Lauren Christensen, Nadxieli Nieto, and Suzanna Tamminen
* 5:00 | Alumni Reading featuring Jedediah Berry, Gion Davis, Emilie Menzel, and Okey Ndibe
* 6:00 | Reception and Book Signing
The Juniper Literary Festival is produced by the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA for Poets and Writers and the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action. The Festival is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the UMass Provost’s Office, the UMass English Department, the UMass Arts Council, and individual contributors. Special thanks to our independent bookstore, Amherst Books, for selling authors’ books at the event!
@umasshfa@umassenglishdept@junipersummer@amherstbooks
Alt text: Desiree C. Bailey and Gabriel Bump featured in circular photographs against a red background.
#writingcommunity
