10 Highlights From 10 Years of LitFest: A Retrospective with Jennifer Acker ’00

The Student interviewed LitFest founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Common Jennifer Acker ’00, who shared her highlights from the first decade of literary celebrations. They included impressive sculptures from the James Baldwin tribute art exhibit by Hilton Als, a musical surprise for Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o from the Amherst College Gospel Choir, and a special visit from Anne Applebaum from her castle in Poland.

1) Year One: The First LitFest

LitFest began when Acker pitched Amherst as a site for The National Book Awards on Campus. “And within probably, you know, 30 minutes [then-President Biddy Martin] wrote back and said, I love this idea. This sounds great,” Acker said.

At the same time, Cullen Murphy ’74, former managing editor of The Atlantic, had been envisioning a literary festival on campus. “Since I’ve known Cullen for a long time,” Acker said, “we sort of put our heads together and started thinking about what that might look like.”

In 2016, their combined vision, in partnership with The Common and The National Book Awards foundation, spurred the inaugural year of LitFest, featuring Mark Bodwen, Michael Chabon, Angela Flourney, Stacy Shiff and Lauren Groff ’01. Acker remembered their first photoshoot fondly, in which she and Martin joyfully posed with the authors.

“We were, like, holding books upside down and making stupid faces and just sort of having some mild fun.” Acker said. “I mean, just because it was the first year, it was so exciting.”

2) Zadie Smith Headlines

In its second year, award-winning novelist Zadie Smith headlined LitFest and spoke with Acker about her New York Times bestselling novel “Swing Time.” Acker recalled the conversation fondly through the lens of her own excitement.

“She’s such a live wire,” Acker said. “[She’s] just incredibly eloquent and that interview wasn’t recorded, and as a result, I have no idea what I said because I was so nervous and excited and having such a fun time … I remember her talking about [President] Donald Trump having daddy issues, and that was kind of all I remember.”

3) Min Jin Lee: From Speaker to Professor

In 2018, Min Jin Lee, author of the New York Times bestselling novel “Pachinko,” was featured at LitFest — speaking with fellow National Book Award finalist Carmen Maria Machado, author of “Her Bodies and Other Parties,” and holding a masterclass on “Interviewing for Fiction.”

After visiting Amherst for LitFest, Lee was reportedly so struck by the “vibrant literary community,” that she returned to the college to teach as a writer-in-residence in 2019.

4) Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o turns 80

In 2018, renowned Kenyan author and academic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o returned to Amherst after teaching at the college in the 1990s. While LitFest had just turned three, Thiong’o had just turned 80. To celebrate him and his work, at the end of his talk, members of the Amherst College Gospel Choir burst through the doors of Johnson Chapel in song. They sang “Happy Birthday” in English and two songs in Kikuyu, a tribute to Thiong’o’s native language.

5) Susan Choi and Pre-Covid

In 2020, LitFest was held just before the mid-March shutdown due to Covid-19. Acker described the close-call event while reminiscing on a discussion she had with Martin: “I was curious what she had been reading. And her answer was one word, and she said, ‘Coronavirus.’” Unbeknownst to the impending pandemic, LitFest 2020 included a multitude of highlight-worthy moments.

As agreed upon by Acker and Managing Editor of The Common Emily Everett, Susan Choi was an outstanding feature of LitFest. At the event, Choi was mainly speaking about her recently-published book “Trust Exercise,” which had won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2019. “I loved [Choi], and when she was here she told us about a whole different ending she originally wrote for her book,” Everett said.

6) Art and LitFest

In 2023, Pulitzer-prize winning critic Hilton Als made an appearance at LitFest. Following his curator’s talk, Als welcomed everyone to the Mead for the opening reception of an iteration of his exhibit “God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin.”

The visual art exhibit included film, sculpture, painting, and photography. Als felt the exhibit was important as a way to pay tribute to Baldwin’s life and art. Acker reflected that “it was really nice to have that collaboration” because it recognized the important intersection of literature and art.

7) Online Year and Anne Applebaum

Like most things during the peak of the pandemic, LitFest went virtual in 2021. Still, with a variety of authors hosting book readings and craft talks over Zoom, there was no shortage of interesting events. One upside to the shift to livestreams and virtual events was the ability to get speakers far away from Amherst. Acker reflected on one case involving Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist and author Anne Applebaum who “joined us from a castle in Poland” where she lives with her husband — the Polish minister of foreign affairs.

8) Justin Torres and Paul Harding

In 2024, Justin Torres arrived on campus for a talk on his 2023 National Book Award-winning novel, “Blackouts.” Torres was joined by Paul Harding, a Pulitzer-prize-winning author who was discussing his 2023 book, “This Other Eden.” Acker reflected, “the two of them [Torres and Harding] had a really good rapport,” likely a result in part because Harding had been Torres’ teacher at University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop.

Litfest’s audience attendance and demographics vary from year to year, with each event’s authors bringing in different mixes of community members, alumni, and students. Acker felt that in 2024 the students were “wild about [Torres], and so that was very exciting to see.”

9) Viet Thanh Nguyen

LitFest not only provides insights into books and authors’ stories, but also highlights the writing processes and tips from some of the best writers in the world. This experience was perhaps best exemplified during Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2022 visit to Amherst for LitFest. Acker described Nguyen’s Johnson Chapel talk as informative, insightful, as well as “incredible … dynamic and really funny.”

Acker was also sure to mention one of Nguyen’s editing practices that particularly struck her: “We were talking about revising his novel, and he said that he had this habit, or this technique, of revising backwards.” Nguyen described his process in which he “reads the paragraph backwards to make sure that every sentence stands on its own.”

10) A Decade of LitFest

In 2025, LitFest hosted a variety of amazing authors and public figures for craft talks, book-discussions, and more. Acker shared enthusiastically, “half of the people who are attending the in-person Johnson Chapel events this year are students.” These events did not disappoint.

A three-person panel featuring Jeffrey Wright, Cord Jefferson, and Percival Everett provided insight into the storytelling and creativity behind the Academy-Award-winning movie American Fiction. Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole reflected on the importance of traveling for his writing process, as he attempts to step into the shoes of each character he features. And Dr. Anthony Fauci shared professional experiences of working with seven presidents and his work with the HIV/AIDS and Covid pandemics, alongside personal stories of education in his youth and various sports-related faux pas.

As the festival winds down for the year, the event’s impact endures. Conversations sparked, ideas introduced, and books newly cherished; the last 10 years of LitFest prove the power of writing to bring community together in meaningful ways. The Student celebrates another year of literary joy, and looks forward to more decades of storytelling, conversations, and great literature.