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By STEVE PFARRER

Call it an encore performance.“The Spiderwick Chronicles,” the bestselling series of fantasy books by Amherst writers Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, has just been turned into a streaming series on The Roku Channel.That comes 16 years after a feature...

By STEVE PFARRER

A lot can change in 20 years: Presidents and other politicians come and go, new cultural fads and technologies emerge, clothing styles morph, and music and movies take on different dimensions.In these parts, one tradition hasn’t changed. Since 2005,...

By STEVE PFARRER

’Tis the season of gigs by artists dropping new albums.In early April, the Valley indie-folk band Cloudbelly celebrated a new disc, “i know i know i know,” with back-to-back shows at The Parlor Room in Northampton, and Natalie Cressman & Ian Faquini,...

By STEVE PFARRER

Not so long ago, there was a general lament sometimes heard among Valley musicians: “There aren’t enough places to play around here.”That might have been true for professional players who wanted to be paid — and maybe, despite the opening of new local...

By STEVE PFARRER

The assignment is pretty straightforward: Tell a concise story about your life, in no more than five minutes, that reflects a certain theme.The challenge is in telling that story with enough heart, spirit, verve, humor or whatever else you can conjure...

By STEVE PFARRER

As part of a funding program for municipal and nonprofit performing arts centers, the Massachusetts Cultural Council is awarding over $150,000 to 10 arts organizations and centers in the Valley.The awards — part of $3.66 million in funding the MCC is...

By STEVE PFARRER

April is shaping up to be a busy month for the University of Massachusetts Theater Department, beginning with a symposium that honors Latinx theater and closing with a fresh interpretation of a classic Shakespeare comedy.On April 8-9, theater...

By STEVE PFARRER

Just days after former folk and Americana performer turned indie-pop singer Caroline Rose played in Florence, Cloudbelly, the Valley indie folk band led by singer-songwriter Corey Laitman, is set to showcase songs from a new album that has a...

By STEVE PFARRER

There’s been a lot written about the problems that have plagued many American workplaces in the wake of the pandemic, from employees insisting on continuing to work from home to offices that have mirrored the polarization and social conflicts plaguing...

By STEVE PFARRER

I Could Have Been More WrongBy Kevin McCaffrey; Four Winds Press Kevin McCaffrey brings something to his poetry that other poets might consider employing more often: a sense of humor.In “I Could Have Been More Wrong,” McCaffrey, a South Hadley...

By STEVE PFARRER

What could be better in winter than a trip to the Caribbean? Warm but not overly hot temperatures, plenty of sun, crystalline waters — sounds like paradise.But as a current exhibit at the Mead Art Museum in Amherst shows, paradise for some can mean...

By STEVE PFARRER

One of a Kind: The Life of Sydney TaylorWritten by Richard Michelson, illustrated by Sarah Green; Calkins Creek Amherst poet and children’s author Richard Michelson has often delved into history in some of his books for young readers, such as “The...

By STEVE PFARRER

Mardi Gras took place last month, but you can catch some of its flavor at the Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity on March 24 at 4 p.m. when Jon Cleary & The Monster Gentlemen come to the Florence venue — with the Soggy Po Boys opening the show.Cleary has...

By STEVE PFARRER

Hannah Arendt famously coined the term “the banality of evil” in her book on Adolph Eichmann’s trial in Israel in 1963, where the former Nazi official, a key organizer of the Holocaust, presented himself as a bureaucrat who was “just doing his job” in...

By STEVE PFARRER

Augusta Savage rose to prominence as a sculptor and educator when she moved to New York City in the 1920s, where she soon became a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance.But Savage, who was also a determined advocate for equal rights for African...

By STEVE PFARRER

AMHERST — Aaron Lansky, founder and president of the Yiddish Book Center, began his 2004 memoir about his work, “Outwitting History,” with a memorable anecdote: how he’d taken a dead-of-night train from the Valley to Manhattan in 1980 and, with the...

By STEVE PFARRER

Between the “Dickinson” series on Apple TV+ and movies such as 2016’s “A Quiet Passion,” interest in Emily Dickinson has grown in the last several years, even beyond the already intense admiration that existed for her poetry among readers and literary...

By STEVE PFARRER

The Real Gatsby:George Gordon MooreBy Mickey RathbunWhite River Press Just who was the inspiration for the character of the Great Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel of the same name?Scholars and literary detectives have tried for decades to...

By STEVE PFARRER

Since opening in the spring of 2022, The Drake has featured a wide range of music, from blues to rock to folk (and various combinations thereof), to jazz and more.“More” includes the Amherst club’s periodic forays into classical music, with concerts...

By STEVE PFARRER

If you’re like me, counting the days to spring, it’s a little over three weeks to the official first day, March 19.Yet that’s just a date on the calendar, and the weather in mid-March can still spell winter. But one antidote to that is to hit the Back...