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By STEVE PFARRER

Pickett’s DreamBy Christopher CarlisleAustin Macauley PublishersChristopher Carlisle, at one time the Episcopal chaplain for the University of Massachusetts Amherst, later co-founded Cathedral in the Night, a Christian outdoor service and community in...

By STEVE PFARRER

War has been a regular horror in Lebanon for nearly half a century, flaring most recently this fall with Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon in attacks against the Iranian-backed paramilitary group Hezbollah, a spillover in turn from the brutal,...

By STEVE PFARRER

SandwichBy Catherine Newman; HarperCollins In late 2022, Amherst writer Catherine Newman released her first adult novel, “We All Want Impossible Things,” after previously publishing a number of nonfiction titles, a middle grade novel, and quite a bit...

By STEVE PFARRER

Journeys of Voices & ChoicesBy Ernie BrillHuman Error PublishingNorthampton poet Ernie Brill, a former English teacher at Northampton High School, is a longtime writer who has worked with many small presses over the years. A consistent theme of his...

By STEVE PFARRER

In the early 1990s, I answered an ad for a reporting job at the Gazette. I had editorial experience — I’d worked as a copywriter, a copy editor, and a proofreader — and I liked writing, but I’d never worked for a newspaper, unless you counted a few...

By STEVE PFARRER

Fresh on the heels of Django in June, Northampton’s annual celebration of jazz manouche and Django Reinhardt, Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares has organized its own summer jazz series for July, both to say “thank you” to supporters and to give local...

By STEVE PFARRER

When folk rockers Eavesdrop and singer-songwriter Grayson Ty come to the Iron Horse on June 28, the fellow Valley artists won’t just be sharing the bill: They’ll be celebrating a reunion of sorts, looking back to the night a little over eight years...

By STEVE PFARRER

After generating some local news in 2022 when scenes were filmed in a number of locations around the Valley, “Janet Planet,” the debut film by celebrated playwright Annie Baker, made its deThursday.The movie, first screened last summer at the...

By STEVE PFARRER

Summer brings outdoor music as well as any number of artistic performances, including theater, literary readings, dances and more.And it’s not just big blowout events like the Green River Festival.In Hadley, the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum has...

By STEVE PFARRER

When Stan Sherer was growing up in the Bronx in New York City in the 1950s, an uncle paid a visit to his family one day and brought along some World War II-era darkroom equipment.Sherer didn’t know it just then, but he was about to find his life’s...

By STEVE PFARRER

Over the past few years, Tony Trischka, considered one of the most influential banjo players around, has been delving deep into the music of another banjo master: the late Earl Scruggs.Scruggs, in the 1940s, developed a unique three-finger style of...

By STEVE PFARRER

Time was when summer theater in the Valley was typically produced by a number of mainstays, including Chester Theatre Company, New Century Theatre, and the Ko Festival at Amherst College.But New Century Theatre shut down a few years ago, as did the Ko...

By STEVE PFARRER

When Chris Smither found his live gigs shut down during the worst months of COVID-19, he figured it might at least be a good opportunity to write some new songs — something the veteran folk/blues singer and guitarist admits is not the easiest process...

By STEVE PFARRER

Not long after 20 years of war finally ended in Vietnam in 1975, another wave of horrendous violence erupted just to the west.The Khmer Rouge, the Communist party of Cambodia, seized control of the country and began a brutal “reeducation” campaign...

By STEVE PFARRER

Journeys of Voices & ChoicesBy Ernie BrillHuman Error Publishing Northampton poet Ernie Brill, a former English teacher at Northampton High School, is a longtime writer who has worked with many small presses over the years. A consistent theme of his...

By STEVE PFARRER

It’s finally happening. Nearly seven months after ownership officially changed hands, and following extensive renovations, the Iron Horse Music Hall, shuttered since late March 2020, threw open its doors this week with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a...

By STEVE PFARRER

It started in early 2018 with a special New York Times series of articles, “Overlooked,” obituaries about notable people whose deaths had gone unreported in the newspaper, which first began publishing obits in 1851.Leverett printmaker and collage...

By STEVE PFARRER

Just in time to coincide with Children’s Book Week, a national event established in 1905, the Massachusetts Center for the Book (MCB) has created a children’s literary showcase here in the Valley.The Mass Kids Lit Fest, a new book festival taking...

By STEVE PFARRER

It’s been another good year for Valley writers.Twelve area authors (and author/illustrators) have had new work long-listed for the 2024 Massachusetts Book Awards, presented annually by the Massachusetts Center for the Book (MCB) in five categories:...

By STEVE PFARRER

If you build it … you can fly it, too.As Peter Elsea and Jason Lorusso have discovered in recent years, there’s a special satisfaction in building your own plane — or at least assisting in that construction — that can make the experience of flying...

By STEVE PFARRER

The Holyoke Civic Symphony has titled its 2023-2024 season “The Brass Menagerie,” not to be cute but to highlight a series of concerts dedicated to celebrating the family of brass instruments: the horn, the tuba, the trumpet, and the trombone.On May...