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By STEVE PFARRER

Dear Oliver: An Unexpected Friendship with Oliver SacksBy Susan R. BarryThe Experiment, LLCSusan Barry, a former Mount Holyoke College professor of neuroscience, behavior, and biology, was born with a significant case of strabismus — crossed eyes —...

By STEVE PFARRER

Editor’s note: The performance at Northampton’s A.P.E. Gallery tonight with Fumi Tomita has been canceled. However, Tomita and Allen Fowler will be present for the artist’s reception at the gallery from 5-8 p.m.​​​​​​A new arts celebrationNORTHAMPTON...

By STEVE PFARRER

Madison Cunningham, who comes to Northampton’s Academy of Music April 19, won the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Folk Album, for her 2022 release, “Revealer.”In fact, Cunningham, who grew up in southern California and still lives there, also has won...

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

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

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

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

EASTHAMPTON — Easthampton Theater Company (ETC), which since forming in late 2022 has staged two sold-out productions at the Blue Room at CitySpace, has formed a new partnership with the Williston Northampton School — one that will bring both a new...

By STEVE PFARRER

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

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 some employees insisting on continuing to work from home to offices that have mirrored the polarization and social conflicts...

By STEVE PFARRER

Can the arts help us reexamine our past and come to terms with injustice? Can music, film and other mediums become instruments for social change by helping us look differently at our history and our beliefs?Those are questions the Power of Truths Arts...

By STEVE PFARRER

The WriteAngles Conference, the Valley literary get-together that has been revived after a five-year absence, has a new keynote speaker.Shanta Lee, an award-winning poet, visual artist, and journalist from Vermont, will give the main address at the...

By STEVE PFARRER

I Could Have Been More WrongBy Kevin McCaffreyFour 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 resident,...

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

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

When Peter Sokolowski started work as an editor at Merriam-Webster 30 years ago, about 80 people worked at the venerable dictionary company in Springfield, including about 45 editors.But based on how quiet the offices were, it might have seemed the...

By STEVE PFARRER

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

By STEVE PFARRER

Since 1987, the WriteAngles Conference had been an annual fixture in the Valley, typically held at one of the local colleges, bringing together area writers, poets, editors, publishers, and booksellers to examine all things literary.Then COVID-19...

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...