Featured Events in South Hadley in November, 2024 (Continuously Updated)

Join us on Tuesday, November 12 at 7 PM as Janis Hubschman talks about her debut story collection, Take Me With You Next Time. She will be joined in conversation by Celia Jeffries. About the BookJanis Hubschman's debut collection Take Me With You Next Time runs the gamut of emotion with characters who confront crises of infidelity, addiction, death, and dementia. These stories feature women held captive by heartbreak, misguided desire, and bewildering grief, who grapple with past choices and must make new ones. They search for answers from psychics, hypnotists, old lovers, Charles Darwin, and the stars— until, at last, they discover they already possess the courage and insight they seek. With impeccable sentences and unerring, exquisite details, Hubschman's fearless, lucid writing unlocks the worlds of her characters to reveal the human needs and longings we recognize as our own. In Wild Quaker Parrot a sneaky green parrot who may or may not be a reincarnated old boyfriend forces a painter to confront her reckless teenage self. In After the Party a fired golf pro unable to reconcile her husband's infidelity, follows in Ted Kennedy's scandalous footsteps on Chappaquiddick. Morally complex and often wryly funny, Take Me With You Next Time showcases the unpredictable ways smart, resilient women persevere to transcend troublesome events and difficult emotions. About the AuthorJanis Hubschman has published dozens of stories in literary magazines that include Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Saturday Evening Post, Southern Humanities Review, and West Branch. Her stories have won Bellingham Review’s Tobias Wolff Award and a first-place award from Glimmer Train. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Glimmer Train Bulletin, and New York Runner. She was the recipient of a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Fiction Scholarship and a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives with her husband in New Jersey and currently teaches fiction writing at Montclair State University. Take Me With You Next Time is her first book.Janis Hubschman has published dozens of stories in literary magazines that include Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Saturday Evening Post, Southern Humanities Review, and West Branch. Her stories have won Bellingham Review’s Tobias Wolff Award and a first-place award from Glimmer Train. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Glimmer Train Bulletin, and New York Runner. She was the recipient of a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Fiction Scholarship and a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives with her husband in New Jersey and currently teaches fiction writing at Montclair State University. Take Me With You Next Time is her first book. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Wednesday November 13 at 7 PM as Laura Tillman talks about her James Beard Award-winning book, The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo García. About the BookWinner of the 2024 James Beard Foundation's Award for Literary Writing A New Yorker Best Book of 2023 • An NPR 2023 Books We Love Pick A chef’s gripping quest to reconcile his childhood experiences as a migrant farmworker with the rarefied world of fine dining. Born in rural Mexico, Eduardo “Lalo” García Guzmán and his family left for the United States when he was a child, picking fruits and vegetables on the migrant route from Florida to Michigan. He worked in Atlanta restaurants as a teenager before being convicted of a robbery, incarcerated, and eventually deported. Lalo landed in Mexico City as a new generation of chefs was questioning the hierarchies that had historically privileged European cuisine in elite spaces. At his acclaimed restaurant, Máximo Bistrot, he began to craft food that narrated his memories and hopes. Mexico City–based journalist Laura Tillman spent five years immersively reporting on Lalo’s story: from Máximo’s kitchen to the onion fields of Vidalia, Georgia, to Dubai’s first high-end Mexican restaurant, to Lalo’s hometown of San José de las Pilas. What emerges is a moving portrait of Lalo’s struggle to find authenticity in an industry built on the very inequalities that drove his family to leave their home, and of the artistic process as Lalo calls on the experiences of his life to create transcendent cuisine. The Migrant Chef offers an unforgettable window into a family’s border-eclipsing dreams, Mexico’s culinary heritage, and the making of a chef. About the AuthorLaura Tillman is a journalist and the author of The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo García (W.W. Norton, 2023), which won the 2024 James Beard Award for Literary Writing, and The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts: Murder and Memory in an American City (Scribner, 2016). She began her career as a newspaper reporter at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2007, before moving to Mexico City in 2014. Her work, which focuses principally on migration, justice, and food, has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Nation. She graduated from Vassar College with a degree in International Studies and Goucher College with an MFA in Nonfiction Writing. She recently moved to Connecticut to join the staff of the CT Mirror, where she covers mental health, addiction, disability services, food insecurity, and children's issues. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Tuesday, November 19 at 7 PM as Luis Jaramillo talks about his new novel, The Witches of El Paso. He will be joined in conversation by Heather Abel. About the BookA lawyer and her elderly great-aunt use their supernatural gifts to find a lost child in this richly imagined and empowering story of motherhood, magic, and legacy in the vein of The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina and La Hacienda. If you call to the witches, they will come. 1943, El Paso, Texas: teenager Nena spends her days caring for the small children of her older sisters, while longing for a life of freedom and adventure. The premonitions and fainting spells she has endured since childhood are getting worse, and Nena worries she’ll end up like the scary old curandera down the street. Nena prays for help, and when the mysterious Sister Benedicta arrives late one night, Nena follows her across the borders of space and time. In colonial Mexico, Nena grows into her power, finding love and learning that magic always comes with a price. In the present day, Nena’s grandniece, Marta, balances a struggling legal aid practice with motherhood and the care of the now ninety-three-year-old Nena. When Marta agrees to help search for a daughter Nena left in the past, the two forge a fierce connection. Marta’s own supernatural powers emerge, awakening her to new possibilities that threaten the life she has constructed. “Sexy, smart, and soulful, Luis Jaramillo’s The Witches of El Paso pulls us across borders and time to get to the essence of what it means for families to survive this beautiful, fractured world” (Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk). About the AuthorLuis Jaramillo is the author of The Witches of El Paso and the award-winning short story collection, The Doctor’s Wife. His writing has appeared in LitHub, BOMB Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at The New School. He received an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and an MFA from The New School. About Heather AbelHeather Abel’s debut novel, THE OPTIMISTIC DECADE, was published in May, 2018. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, the Los Angeles Times, and the online Paris Review among other places. She worked as a reporter and editor for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and High Country News, during which time she talked to gold miners, fossil hounds, Native American environmental activists, and really bored teens in rural Utah. She received an MFA in fiction writing from the New School University, and she’s taught writing at the New School, UMass Amherst, and Smith College. Raised in Santa Monica, she now lives in Northampton, MA with her husband and two daughters, and she dreams of the Colorado high desert. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite