Art and politics took center stage at our 11th annual LitFest! From February 26th to March 1st, the community flocked to Amherst College for talks by Jamaica Kincaid, Pete Buttigieg, and more. Students competed in the Spoken Word Slam, and filled seminar rooms for craft classes with Jamaica Kincaid, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Evie Shockley, and Dan Chiasson.
Read on for a gallery of selected images and videos from LitFest 2025, and view all the event recordings here before they expire.
Pete Buttigieg and Jamaica Kincaid
This year’s LitFest opened with a headliner: former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. He indulged his bookish side in conversation with Cullen Murphy, recounting a love for James Joyce inherited from his father—a college professor—and calling Ulysses a basically “democratic” novel in its ability to raise everyday life to the level of the epic.
Pete Buttigieg speaks in Johnson Chapel, February 27, 2026 | Photo by Maria Stenzel
Well-done politics, like good literature, takes just what it is like to be a person as a point of departure and revolves around that.
Between rounds of hors d’oeuvres at the President’s House, student interns at The Common got the chance to ask Mayor Pete for book recommendations and, inevitably, a group photo.
Pictured, from left to right, Editorial Assistant Luchik Belau-Lorberg, David Applefield Fellow Aidan Cooper, Literary Editorial Fellow Kei Lim, Pete Buttigieg, and Editorial Assistants Camila Massaki Gomes, Ben Tamburri, and Morry Ajao.
Filling a seminar room on February 28, Jamaica Kincaid’s Craft Talk encouraged students to read widely, and to not “believe in” creative writing as a craft, but to invent their own rules.
Jamaica Kincaid in conversation with students at her craft talk on Saturday, February 28.
Later that day, Kincaid brought crowds to Johnson Chapel for a conversation with The Common’s Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker, about her childhood growing up in Saint John—learning to read at three and a half, being captivated by an image of Lucifer while transcribing Paradise Lost as a classroom punishment—as well as her tenacious path to New Yorker stardom at a time when magazines “[didn’t] hire black girls.” “Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven” Kincaid told a rapt audience. “If I believe in something, I will do it.”
Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven… If I believe in something, I will do it.
Kincaid left the stage to a standing ovation from the audience. You can read more about her visit and view her full conversation with Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Acker here.
Alumni Author and Student Reading!
But that wasn’t all—students and community members packed into the foyer of Frost Library for an Amherst alumni panel titled “The Self in the World: Forging a Politics of Belonging,” featuring Aatish Taseer ’03 (A Return to Self), Dan Chiasson ’93 (Bernie for Burlington), and Helen Whybrow ’90 (The Salt Stones). That afternoon, TC student interns read pieces alongside breakout Amherst alumni authors Nalini Jones ’93 (The Unbroken Coast), Claire Jia ’15 (Wanting), Hannah Gersen ’00 (We Were Pretending), and Nina Sudhakar ’07 (Where to Carry the Sound). Watch the full recording below!
Poetry Propels Us
LitFest concluded on Sunday morning with a reading and conversation between poets Evie Shockley and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, led by Ruth Dickey, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation. Shockley and Khalaf Tuffaha, poets both wrestling with the catastrophes of our time, spoke about the layered valences of language and the ways it can speak worlds into being. “Poetry is a great technology for holding multiple valences at the same time,” said Lena Khalaf Tuffaha. “For taking on something really large, and maybe even catastrophic, and repeopling it with the humans to whom it is happening.” The full recording can be found here.
The Common is grateful for the support of Amherst College and all who made this year’s LitFest a success.
