January 21, 2026, 6-7pm

Join us for an exploration of Digital Wellbeing. Dr. Elizabeth (Betsy) Cracco, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Campus Life and Wellbeing, at UMass Amherst, will present "IRL – In Real Life: Mental health and the importance of embodied experience in a digital world."

Wellbeing Wednesdays are monthly programs exploring topics in health and wellness. Presented in partnership with RecWell (UMass Amherst Recreation and Wellbeing), these events are free and open to all.

Wildwood Remembers is a three-part series exploring UMass connections to Wildwood Cemetery with Rebecca Fricke, General Manager of Wildwood Cemetery.

Oct. 7, 2025, 7pm

Frederick Law Olmsted, Cemeteries, and the Gardenesque, with Dr. Ethan Carr, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning 

Nov. 4, 2025, 7pm

The Man Who Loved Trees, the Life and Legacy of Frank A. Waugh (1869-1943), with Dr. Annaliese Bischoff, Professor Emerita of Landscape Architecture

Jan. 13, 2026, 7pm

Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archives and Memory Work: Giving Agency to the Silent, with Taelore Marsh, Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archives Archivist (co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Amherst Racial Justice Committee)

December 16, 2025, 7pm

Introduced by the former Director of the UMass Civic Initiative Mike Hannahan, Bob Blaemire will discuss his new book, Unforced Errors: 15 Bad Decisions That Changed American History.

Blaemire has been a participant in politics all of his adult life. For many years, he worked for Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN), who authored Title IX and the 25th and 26th Amendments. Blaemire went on to form a political action committee before beginning a long career providing political computer services for Democratic candidates and progressive organizations. An early participant in the rise of big data, he owned and managed Blaemire Communications for 17 years. Blaemire is also the author of the 2019 book, Birch Bayh: Making a Difference.

Unforced Errors will be available for purchase courtesy of Amherst Books.

November 19, 2025, 6-7pm

Join us for an exploration of Sleep Science. Dr. Rebecca Spencer, Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences at UMass Amherst, will present "Snoozefest! Why we sleep and how to get more of it!"

Wellbeing Wednesdays are monthly programs exploring topics in health and wellness. Presented in partnership with RecWell (UMass Amherst Recreation and Wellbeing), these events are free and open to all. Registration is recommended at the link below.

Register Here

Dr. Rebecca Spencer graduated from the Purdue University Neuroscience graduate program, concentrating in neural control of movement. After graduating from Purdue with a PhD in neuroscience in 2002, she went to UC Berkeley where she was a postdoctoral fellow and research scientist in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute until 2008. Her postdoctoral work on neural control of motor sequence learning was funded by an NIH NRSA. Subsequently, she was awarded an NIH Pathways to Independence Award (K99/R00) for studies on the age-related changes in sleep-dependent consolidation of motor learning. 

In 2008, Rebecca joined the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2013. Her current work is broadly on the functions of sleep, including topics such as the function of naps for preschool children and the role of age-related changes in sleep on age-related cognitive decline. For this work, she holds two NIH R01 awards and has over 60 publications.

November 6, 2025, 7pm

Presented in partnership with the Amherst Business Improvement District, Writers Reading is a curated series featuring local authors. In our next installment of the reading series, join us for a line-up curated by featured writer Abigail Chabitnoy. Fellow authors Melissa Dickey, Hannah Brooks-Motl, and Joan Tate will join Chabitnoy in sharing selections from their work. See author bios below. This event is free to attend and open to all.

Abigail Chabitnoy is the author of In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful (Wesleyan 2022); How to Dress a Fish (Wesleyan 2019), shortlisted for the 2020 International Griffin Prize for Poetry and winner of the 2020 Colorado Book Award; and the linocut illustrated chapbook Converging Lines of Light (Flower Press 2021). She currently is an Assistant Professor at UMass Amherst and teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts low-residency MFA program. Abigail is a member of the Tangirnaq Native Village in Kodiak. Find her at salmonfisherpoet.com.

Melissa Dickey is the author of three books of poems -- The Lily Will, Dragons, and Ordinary Entanglement, which received a citation from the Mass Book Awards in 2024. She earned her undergraduate degree in writing from the University of Washington and her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Born and raised in New Orleans, she now lives in Western Massachusetts where she teaches high school and community classes, consults with rivers, raises children, and studies the tarot.

Hannah Brooks-Motl was born and raised in Wisconsin. She is author of the poetry collections The New Years (2014), M (2015), Earth (2019), and Ultraviolet of the Genuine (2025), named a finalist for the New England Book Award, as well as chapbooks from the Song Cave, arrow as aarow, and The Year. She earned an MFA from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and PhD from the University of Chicago. She lives in western Massachusetts.

Joan Tate is a southern poet, mystic, and transexual living in Western Massachusetts. Her work engages with questions of grace, earnesty, esotericism, and snakes. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in magazines such as Prairie Schooner, b l u s h, Discount Guillotine, Stone of Madness, and Little Mirror.

October 29, 2025, 6-8pm

Calling all dreamers! Do you have an idea? Are you looking for some help turning that idea into a reality? Innovate413 and @umassdowntown are teaming up to host a hands-on startup workshop.

Bring your curiosity, your passion, or even just a small spark, and get guidance from local mentors. No prior business experience needed. Free and open to all. Registration is required at the link below.

Register Here

October 8, 2025, 5-7pm

People are living longer these days. As a result, many of us can expect to spend 20 or more years in retirement. How can we make the most of those ~8000 days? Join a panel of local experts to learn about the tools and resources that can help you and your family navigate the aging process. 

Explore important estate planning steps that everyone should be taking as they get older, and other options for specific situations that might apply to your situation, including minimizing estate taxes, avoiding the need to involve the probate court process, and protecting assets from long-term care. Learn how you can make minor adjustments to your space now so you can enjoy it for years to come. And more!

Register Here

This event is free and open to all. Light refreshments will be provided. 

About the Panelists

As an Edward Jones financial advisor, Tim Hampson believes it is important to invest time to understand what you’re working toward before you invest your money. He has been in the financial services industry for over 20 years and is active in the Area Chamber of Commerce. Tim coaches Amherst Youth Lacrosse, fosters puppies with his local Better Together Dog Rescue, and has served on the board of trusts of The Common School. He and his wife, Amy, have raised their three children, Carter, Quinn and Liza, in the area. In their spare time, they enjoy watching their children participate in college athletics, renovating their circa 1758 historic home and enjoy many outdoor activities.

Heidi Flanders is owner and designer at Integrity Development & Construction. Her passion for residential architecture is built on a strong foundation of safety and functional design. As a Certified Aging-In-Place Specialist (CAPS) with a BS in residential architecture, she possesses a deep understanding of materials, costs, and forward-thinking design. Drawing on a unique background as a registered EMT and her rural upbringing, Heidi brings a grounded, real-world perspective enabling her to evaluate client needs & wants with incredible insight.

Michael Gove is a lifelong Western Mass resident, first growing up in Ludlow, before moving to Hampshire County in 2010.  He is a partner at Legacy Counsellors, P.C., a premier estate planning and real estate law firm with offices in Amherst; Easthampton; Ludlow; Bloomfield, Connecticut; and Lebanon, New Hampshire.  Michael is licensed to practice law in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Florida.   Michael now lives in Huntington, with his partner Alison, his six (“and a half!”) year old daughter, two dogs, and eleven chickens (so far).

Judi Bruno LaBranche, MS, is a Lecturer at the University of Massachusetts in the Kinesiology Department. She specializes in integrating physical activity into daily life to increase quality of life, especially with a chronic disease.

September 11, 2025, 7pm

Presented in partnership with the Amherst Business Improvement District, Writers Reading is a curated series featuring local authors. In our next installment of the reading series, join us for a line-up curated by featured writer Michael Mercurio. Mercurio and fellow authors JJ Starr-McClain, Kirun Kapur, and Patrick Donnelly will share selections from their work. See author bios below. This event is free to attend and open to all.

A poet, editor, and occasional critic, Michael Mercurio lives and writes in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. His poems, interviews, and reviews have been published or are forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Thrush, The Common, Cream City Review, Sierra (the magazine of the Sierra Club), Sugar House Review, Lily Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Michael is the founder and curator of What The Universe Is: A (Virtual) Reading Series, where established and emerging poets read together monthly on Zoom. In addition, he serves on the planning committee for the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival, held each September at Emily Dickinson's house, and he is an instructor for the Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop. You can find out more about Michael at poetmercurio.com.

J.J. Starr-McClain is a poet from Chicago and is currently based in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in The Common, Four Way Review, Juked, The Journal, and elsewhere. She studied at the NYU Creative Writing Program and has received support from Wesleyan University and the Community of Writers. jjstarrwrites.com

Kirun Kapur is the winner of the Arts & Letters Rumi Prize in Poetry and the Antivenom Poetry Award for her first book, Visiting Indira Gandhi’s Palmist (Elixir Press, 2015). Her second collection, Women in the Waiting Room (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and was included in the Best Books of 2020 by Kirkus Reviews. Named an “Asian-American poet to watch” by NBC News, her work has appeared in AGNI, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares and many other journals. She has been granted fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Vermont Studio Center and MacDowell Colony. Kapur serves as the editor at The Beloit Poetry Journal, one of the nation’s oldest poetry publications. She teaches at Amherst College, where she is director of the Creative Writing Program. Learn more at kirunkapur.com.

Patrick Donnelly is the author of five books of poetry, most recently WILLOW HAMMER (Four Way Books, 2025). Former poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, his poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Slate, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Yale Review, and many other journals. Donnelly is Program Director of The Frost Place, Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, NH, now a center for poetry and the arts. Donnelly’s translations with Stephen D. Miller of classical Japanese poetry were awarded the 2015-2016 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. More at: patrickdonnellypoetry.com.

Thursdays, June 12, 26, July 10-31, 2025; 10am-12pm

Stop by UMass Downtown to receive free tech help provided by technicians from the UMass Store. Services include computer/iPhone/iPad troubleshooting, Windows support, hardware diagnostics, and iPhone battery health checks. No appointment necessary!

July 10, 2025, 7pm

Presented in partnership with the Amherst Business Improvement District, Writers Reading is a curated series featuring local authors. In our first installment of the reading series, join us for a line-up curated by featured writer Nathan McClain. McClain and fellow authors Jen Jabaily-Blackburn, Matt Donovan, and Rebecca Hart Olander will share selections from their work. See author bios below. This event is free to attend and open to all.

Nathan McClain (he/him) is the author of two collections of poetry: Previously Owned (Four Way Books, 2022), longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and Scale (Four Way Books, 2017). He is a recipient of fellowships from The Frost Place, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and is a Cave Canem fellow. He earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College. His poems and prose have appeared in Plume Poetry 10, The Hopkins Review, The Common, Poetry Northwest, and Zócalo Public Square, among others. He teaches at Hampshire College and serves as poetry editor of the Massachusetts Review.

Jen Jabaily-Blackburn is the author of the full-length collection Girl in a Bear Suit (Elixir Press, 2024) and the e-chapbook Disambiguation (Salamander/Suffolk University, 2024) She is the winner of the Louisa Solano Memorial Emerging Poet Award from Salamander, selected by Stephanie Burt. Recent work has appeared in or is coming soon from The Common, On the Seawall, and SIR among others. She’s at work on a series of mixed-media blackout poems, hem, drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Originally from the Boston area, she lives in Easthampton with her family and is the Program & Outreach coordinator for the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center.

Matt Donovan is the author of four books and two chapbooks, most recently We Are Not Where We Are (an erasure of Walden, co-authored with Jenny George, Bull City Press 2025) and The Dug-Up Gun Museum (a collection of poems about gun violence in America, BOA 2022). Donovan is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize in Literature, and an NEA Fellowship in Literature, and he serves as Director of the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.

Rebecca Hart Olander’s poetry and collaborative visual and written work has appeared in print, online, and in multiple anthologies. Her books include Dressing the Wounds (dancing girl press, 2019), Uncertain Acrobats (CavanKerry Press, 2021), a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award in Poetry and the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry, and Singing from the Deep End (CavanKerry Press, 2026). Rebecca has taught writing at Amherst and Smith colleges, Westfield State University, and Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop, and she works with poets in the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing. She is the editor/director of Perugia Press.

June 14, 2025, 2:30, 3:00, 3:30pm

Celebrate the jazz roots of Amherst with live sets from acclaimed saxophonist and UMass alum Chuck Langford. The program will repeat three times--at 2:30pm, 3:00pm, and 3:30pm. Join us!

A Tribute to the Jazz Roots of Amherst is presented as part of the 5th Annual Ancestral Bridges Juneteenth Legacy Celebration. Learn more and see the full line up of events here.

June 10, 2025, 6:30-7:30pm

In our third installment of the Politics & Policy lecture and discussion series, Dr. Jane Fountain, Distinguished Professor, co-founder of the National Center for Digital Government, and director of the School of Public Policy will present, "AI, Bias, and Public Policy: What to Know about Algorithms".

AI uses computational algorithms with potential to improve public policy and civic life. But some algorithms are based on biased data and encode those biases into decision making models. Biases of concern are related to ethnicity, gender, race, disabilities, age and related attributes. AI based models may reproduce biased decisions made in the past and residing in large databases which then influence procedures and processes that may intentionally or unintentionally disadvantage some people. Examples are drawn from facial recognition technologies, predictive policing and automated decision making in administrative systems. Explore some of the remedies proposed to enhance the prospects for fair, transparent and equitable systems.

This series is presented in partnership with the UMass School of Public Policy, the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences, and the Political Science Department.

May 8, 2025, 5:30-7:30pm

Looking for an opportunity to make a difference in your community and to have fun at the same time? Do you have skills you want to use, or skills you want learn? We want you! 

Join us for a fast-paced "speed dating" and networking event for nonprofits in need of volunteers and community members interested in volunteering. Light refreshments provided. See this event's lineup of nonprofits, learn more about the event, and register HERE.

Presented in partnership with the UMass Amherst Community Campaign and United Way of the Franklin & Hampshire Region.

May 6, 2025, 6:30-7:30pm

Dr. Charli Carpenter is a professor of Political Science specializing in international law and human security and director of Human Security Lab.

Series presented in partnership with the UMass School of Public Policy and the UMass Political Science Department.

April 24, 2025, 6:30-7:30pm

Dr. Ray La Raja is a professor of Political Science specializing in public policy and political reform and co-founder and co-director of the UMass Poll.

Series presented in partnership with the UMass School of Public Policy and the UMass Political Science Department.

April 9, 2025, 4:30pm

Join the Edwin C. Gentzler Translation Center at UMass Downtown for a special event with Victoria Offredi Poletto and Giovanna Bellesia Contuzzi. They will read from and discuss their translation of Adrián N. Bravi’s "My Language Is a Jealous Lover", which won the 2024 Mass Book Award for Translated Literature.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event through Amherst Books.

Sponsored by the Mass Book Awards Speakers Bureau and presented in collaboration with the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

April 3, 2025, 4–7 p.m.

Get ready to run! Join Big Brothers Big Sisters of Hampshire County at UMass Downtown for a Daffodil Run pre-race event to remember. Music, food, giveaways, 15% off all UMass gear, and more!

Purchase a $3 cowbell to ring during the race. The UMass Store will donate 10% of all April 3 sales at both UMass Downtown and the UMass Store on campus and 100% of all cowbell sale proceeds to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Hampshire County.

March 14-16, 2025

Celebrate the grand opening of UMass Downtown, located at 108 N. Pleasant St. in the heart of downtown Amherst. Stop by UMass Amherst's new multipurpose retail, meeting, and micro-event space this weekend during our Grand Opening Sale. 15% off purchases and raffles on site all weekend. Check out the new space and save on some new and classic UMass favorites!

Friday, March 14, 10am-6pm
Saturday, March 15, 10am-4pm
Sunday, March 16, 10am-4pm