New to town, & to Mt. Holyoke College, Amity Gaige is author of a debut novel, O My Darling.   Stuart Dybek said of it, “Given its level of sophistication and off-center wit, it’s a bit startling to realize that O My Darling is Amity Gaige's first novel.   The characters, beautifully drawn, are as unsentimental toward one another as their author is toward them & yet, wonderfully, this novel with its many ambushes of lyrical moments, is deeply felt.“   (2006)

Acclaimed for her excquisite prose & crystalline insights, Amity Gaige will have a new novel appearing in April—The Folded World, the story of an idealistic young social worker drawn into the lives of his mentally ill clients.   With an unerring eye for both the joys & devastations of life, Gaige once again reminds us of the pleasures & depths to be found in her fiction.  (2007)

Professor & Director of the Translation Center at the University of Massachustts, Edwin Gentzler divides his time between teaching in Comparative Literature & directing the University’s Translation Center.  His research interests include translation theory, literary translation, and postcolonial theory.   His latest book, Translation & Identity in the Americas builds on research from a variety of disciplines including cultural studies, linguistics, feminism & ethnic studies.  Using case studies from Brazil, Canada & the Caribbean, it shows that translation is one of the primary means by which a culture is constructed: translation in the Americas is less something that happens between separate & distinct cultures & more something that is capable of establishing those very cultures.   (2007)

Alexander George, professor of philosophy at Amherst College, co-editor (with Daniel Velleman) of Philosophies of Mathematics, & (with Lawrence Douglas) of Sense & Nonsensibility: Lampoons of Learning & Literature; & founder of the website, AskPhilosophers.org, is editor of new book—What Would Socrates Say?: Philosophers Tackle Questions about Love, Nothingness, & Everything Else.   The profound, the paradoxical, the playful, & the classic questions asked & answered in this book are taken from discussions on AskPhilosophers.org, it includes contributions by seveal area philosophers, including Louise Antony (University of Massachussets), Nalini Bhushan (Smith College), Jyl Gentzler, Joe Moore, & Matt Silverstein (Amherst College).   Featuring questions from people around the world—doctors, lawyers, the uneducated, the elderly, & even young children (for example, “If everything has an opposite, like night & day, then what’s the opposite of a banana?”)—this book is for anyone seeking enlightenment on a complicated or an elusive concept relevant to the lives we lead today.   Whether you agree with the answers given or not, this book reminds us of Socrates’ famous words—“a life unexamined is not worth living”—&, in doing so, encourages us to think a little more deeply, a little more critically, &, well, a little more philosophically about how we make our way in the world.   (2007)

Amherst College professors Alexander George & Lawrence Douglas are author of this fabulously funny book.   As Anne Fadiman said in a review, “Most humor writing is either smart but not funny or funny but not smart. In Sense and Nonsensibility, you have—at long last—a book that will not only make you laugh out loud but persuade those who see you reading it that your SAT scores were at least fifty points higher than they really were.”   (2004)

University of Massachusetts professor, Olga Gershenson, has published a new book—Gesher: Russian Theatre in Israel; A Study of Cultural Colonization.   It’s not every day that an entire book is published in the US about an Israeli theater company.   The last one was published in 1979 about Habima.   This time the book is about Gesher, a brainchild of Russian-Jewish immigrants to Israel, which has risen to become a major public theater today.   In some ways, Gesher is a contemporary Habima.   Gesher’s story weaves together issues of immigration, cultural policy, & interethnic relations.   Gershenson, herself a Soviet immigrant to Israel, has published widely in Israel cultural studies & critical ethnography.   (2005)

Leonard Glick, Pelham resident & professor emeritus at Hampshire College, is author of Marked In Your Flesh: Circumcision From Ancient Judea To Modern America, a study of the history of circumcision as a religious, cultural & medical procedure.   Glick is also author of Abraham's Heirs: Jews & Christians in Medieval Europe.   (2005)

Kevin Goodan, a Montana native, is a recent graduate of the M.F.A. Program at the University of Massachusetts.  His first book, In the Ghost-House Acquainted, won the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award.   James Tate said of Goodan's work, "It is rare to see a poet work so hard in the physical world—serious farm labor—& still catch a fleeting glimpse of the spirit.   Kevin Goodan does this convincingly because his language is so precise & his mind knows when to jump & when to stand still.  This is a remarkable book."   (2005)

Montague resident Amy Gordon has a new book for middle-schoolers, Magic by Heart.   It's a fantasy which brings together enchanted animals, magical musicians, & mere mortals in a story about seeing into people’s true souls.   Gordon is author of many books for children, including Gorillas of Gill Park, Return to Gill Park, & The Secret Life of a Boarding School Brat.   (2007)

Amherst native, Tyran Grillo, is translator of Parasite Eve by Japanese writer & pharmacologist Hideaki Sena.   It was Parasite Eve, along with Koji Suzuki’s Ring series, that began the J-Horror boom.   A pageturner about the rebellion of mitochondria, it became the Japan Horror Novel Award’s first winner & the inspiration for a videogame that has sold close to a million copies throughout the world.   In Japan, the film version of Parasite Eve was so popular that in one study, when asked what color they thought mitochondria were, most people responded, “green” (which is how they were represented in the film, but obviously not how they actually look).   (2006)

Chicopee resident & librarian, Patty Guilmette has just published her first volume of poetry,Under a Blanket of Stars.   (2007)

With Sports: The First Five Millennia Allen Guttmann, Amherst College professor of English, has added a new book to his growing corpus of on sports, including From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports, Women's Sports: A History, Games & Empires, & The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games.   (2005)