Amherst College Map & Tours

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Tours

1. Literary Amherst Tour

   Amherst College is one of the world's premier writing colleges. This walking tour provides a sample of Amherst's literary landmarks.

   Stops

   1. Johnson Chapel

      Johnson Chapel

      Johnson Chapel is home to Amherst College’s English department, as well as the premier location for author talks, symposiums, and LitFest, Amherst’s annual literary festival that celebrates the College’s extraordinary literary life by bringing to campus distinguished authors and editors.

      English at Amherst Located on the first floor of Johnson Chapel, Amherst's English department offers courses in literature, film, poetry, culture and creative writing. Amherst students learn to read closely, think critically and write well. To learn more, visit the English department’s website.
      
      Also scroll through the carousel above to watch a video of English professor and critically acclaimed author Judith Frank discussing creative writing at Amherst, and visit Literary Amherst to discover more about Amherst's rich literary tradition. The Ulysses Bathroom

      In the fall of 1978, four Amherst students hiked to the top of Mount Tom, a local mountain, carrying with them a snack of cheese and a few bottles of wine. After their picnic, the conversation turned to the English department’s high regard of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and a plan was hatched. Later that night, three of those students sneaked into Johnson Chapel to create an homage to the novel inside what was then the faculty bathroom on the second floor. Read this article from a 2010 edition of Amherst magazine to discover who the students were and why their identifies remained a mystery for over two decades.

   2. Johnson Chapel

      Lauren Groff ’01 Prolific fiction writer Lauren Groff returned to Amherst in 2016 to attend LitFest, Amherst’s annual literary festival held in Johnson Chapel celebrating the College’s extraordinary literary life.
      
      While a student at Amherst, Groff was a busy athlete as a member of both club soccer and the crew team. When she wasn’t on the field or the river, she was dedicated to studying the humanities, in particular writing: she claims she spent a lot of her free time writing “bad stories,” one of which earned her the College’s Peter Burnett Howe Prize. In an online discussion with fellow alumni upon publication of her debut novel The Monsters of Templeton, which began in a creative writing workshop on campus, she wrote, “I can only hope that we have a discussion that will bring back those long afternoon English literature seminars in Johnson Chapel, when we were kindled and delighted by the roiling conversation about whatever disparate texts … we were reading at the time.” A French and English double major, Groff cites two classes as integral to her growth as a writer: French professor Leah Hewitt’s “Autobiographies” and English professor Judith Frank’s introduction to creative writing. “I just loved college,” Groff said in an interview with the Amherst student newspaper. “It was just a feeling of being coddled and beloved in a community where people had the same sorts of ideas and goals. I think that I’m always trying to go back to that place.”
      
      Born: July 23, 1978, Cooperstown, N.Y. 

      Selected Works: The Monsters of Templeton, Delicate Edible Birds, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Florida.  

      Selected Awards: Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN/O. Henry Prize, Pushcart Prize. Finalist: National Book Award for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award
      
      Find more alumni authors in the Amherst Reads online book club, where you can read excerpts and reviews, hear interviews and more.

   3. Williston Hall

      Sonia Sanchez

      Called “a lion in literature’s forest” by Maya Angelou, poet and activist Sonia Sanchez left her mark during the three short years she taught at Amherst. Between 1972 and 1975, Sanchez was the first African-American woman to teach at the College and was the second-ever chair of the Department of Black Studies, then housed in Williston Hall.
      
      After leaving Amherst, Sanchez went on to publish numerous books of poetry, become Philadelphia’s first poet laureate and star in a 2015 documentary of her life and works, BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez. Sanchez returned to Amherst in 2017 for a screening of her film at Amherst Cinema and to talk to locals and students about her poetry and work in the Black Arts Movement. In 2018, Sanchez returned again to deliver the keynote speech at the second annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Symposium. Speaking to the “Beloved Community” symposium theme, Sanchez delivered an hourlong poem, urging her audience to, in King's words, “rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.”
      
      

      Born: Sept. 9, 1934, Birmingham, Ala. 

      Selected Works: Homecoming, We a BaddDDD People, I've Been a Woman, Under a Soprano Sky, Shake Loose My Skin 

      Selected Awards: P.E.N. Writing Award, Langston Hughes Poetry Award, Robert Frost Medal, Harper Lee Award, Wallace Stevens Award

   4. Frost Library

      Frost Library

      Opened in 1965, Frost Library houses Amherst’s Archives & Special Collections, a treasure trove of rare books and literary manuscripts from Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Richard Wilbur, William Wordsworth and Noah Webster.
      
      And just like Johnson Chapel, Frost even has its own literary bathroom!

      The Common Literary Magazine

      Also located in Frost Library are the offices of The Common, Amherst's literary magazine.
      
      After leaving the book publishing business in New York, magazine founder and editor in chief Jennifer Acker ’00 sought to create a magazine that would capture “a modern sense of place” and highlight Amherst’s enviable literary history. Editorial board member Richard Wilbur ’42 praised the magazine’s name—inspired by the Amherst town common—because it made the publication sound “like it had always existed.” Provided with office space and a few student interns, The Common published a prototype in 2010 and launched its debut issue in 2011, including a story by Lauren Groff ’01. The magazine, which publishes biannually, regularly receives grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and pieces from The Common have been selections in the Best American series and recipients of the O. Henry Prize (2017) and the PEN/American Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers 2017. In 2016, Acker and The Common were the driving forces behind the creation of LitFest.
      
      The Common offers Literary Publishing Internships for Amherst College students. The following interns contributed to the writing of the Literary Amherst Tour:

      
      Isabel Meyers '20

      Julia Pike '19

      Whitney Bruno '21

      Griffen Lessell '20

      Avery Farmer '20

      Debbie Wen '19

       

   5. Robert Frost Statue

      Robert Frost

      Robert Frost taught on and off at the College for more than 40 years. Following up a 1916 reading engagement at Amherst, Frost received his first-ever full professorship the following year, teaching “Advanced Composition.” During his time at Amherst, Frost won the first three of his record-setting four Pulitzer Prizes, and published, among other works, the now-famous poems “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Frost took a roughly 10-year hiatus from Amherst beginning in 1938, before returning as the Simpson Lecturer in Literature. He met with both James Merrill ’47 and Richard Wilbur ’42 and offered private sessions with any student who memorized and recited one of Frost’s own poems. Frost always saw himself as a poet first and a professor second, stating in 1955 that although he did consider himself a teacher, he was “more a full-time poet.” In 1962, shortly before his death, Frost attended the announcement of a new Amherst College library to be named in his honor. A year later, President John F. Kennedy, who had invited Frost to read at his inauguration, came to campus to speak at the groundbreaking ceremony, in one of his final public appearances.
      
      Amherst recognized Robert Frost’s role in the life of the College—and in American poetry—with a sculpture dedicated in June 2007. Created by sculptor Penelope Jencks, the eight-ton granite likeness of the poet was a gift of the College’s Class of 1957, which celebrated its 50th reunion that weekend.

      
      Visit Literary Amherst to learn more about Robert Frost's connection to Amherst College.
      
      

      Died: Jan. 29, 1963

      Born: March 26, 1874, San Francisco

      Selected Works: New Hampshire, Collected Poems, A Further Range, A Witness Tree
      Selected Awards: Poet Laureate of Vermont (a position created in 1961 specifically to honor Frost; after his death it was left vacant for 25 years), Congressional Gold Medal, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (four). Nominations: Nobel Prize in Literature (31)

   6. Webster Hall

      Creative Writing Center Located in Webster Hall, Amherst's Creative Writing Center offers courses in the writing of fiction, poetry, plays, non-fictional prose, and translation. The work of the Center is interdisciplinary, taught by faculty from a variety of College departments. In addition to the courses, the Center offers readings and class visits by practicing writers and editors, and a place where students and faculty writers can gather to read and talk.
      

   7. Kirby Theater

      James Merrill ’47

      From the moment Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Merrill stepped onto Amherst’s campus, he brought with him a reputation—his father, Charles Merrill ’08, was a founder of the Merrill Lynch investment firm.
      
      He began his collegiate literary life by taking English 1 with Professor Theodore Baird, then dove into theater. On campus, he played the role of the butler in P.G. Wodehouse’s The Play’s the Thing in 1943, then wrote and produced his own first play in 1947, The Birthday, performed at Amherst’s Kirby Theater. In between, Merrill was drafted into the army, serving eight months, and saw his first poetry collection, The Black Swan, published privately in Greece.
      
      By the end of his time at Amherst, Merrill was known more for his literary accomplishments than for his father’s wealth. In a private meeting with campus visitor Robert Frost, the elderly poet praised Merrill’s undergrad poems as works that forced readers to “say things in a new way.” In 1951, Merrill released his first commercially published volume, First Poems.

       

      Born: March 3, 1926, New York City
      Died: February 6, 1995

      Selected Works: The Changing Light at Sandover, Divine Comedies, Days and Nights, Mirabell: Books of Numbers  

      Selected Awards: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, National Book Award for Poetry, Bollingen Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award
      
      Find more alumni authors in the Amherst Reads online book club, where you can read excerpts, hear interviews and more.

   8. Mayo-Smith Residence Hall

      Richard Wilbur ’42

      While at Amherst, Richard Wilbur was in the Chi Psi fraternity, now the Mayo-Smith House dormitory.
      
      His literary gifts were obvious from the outset: he was editor of The Amherst Student; contributed both words and drawings to Touchstone, the College’s humor magazine; and was class poet in his senior year, giving a reading at Senior Class Day. After graduating, Wilbur served with the American Fifth Army that liberated Rome during World War II. He wrote to his wife, Charlee, on June 6, 1944, “My worst scare was having the roof shelled off the second floor of a house, on the first floor of which I was unhappily lying. I should like to shake the hand of the man who made that ceiling.” Wilbur returned to Amherst often: for his friend Robert Frost’s 80th birthday celebration in 1954, for a 1959 panel on Emily Dickinson and, more recently, for the founding ceremony of the Emily Dickinson Museum in 2003 and President Biddy Martin’s inauguration in 2011. The Amherst College archives hold an immense collection of Wilbur’s materials, including an oral history interview he did with friend and tennis partner Professor David Sofield, with whom he shared the title of Simpson Lecturer in Literature from 2008 to 2014. “In every class of poetry writing,” Wilbur wrote of his years teaching, “I imagine that only two or three out of the 15 will prove to be publishable poets, but that doesn’t matter. The important thing is to get oneself eloquently off one’s chest.”
      
      Read “The Splendor of Mere Being," a remembrance of Wilbur that appeared in a 2017 edition of Amherst magazine.

       

      Born: March 1, 1921, New York City
      Died: October 14, 2017

      Selected Works: Things of This World: Poems, Anterooms: New Poems and Translations, The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems  

      Selected Awards: Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, United States Poet Laureate, National Book Award for Poetry

   9. Converse Hall

      Clyde Fitch, Class of 1886

      Upon his death, acclaimed playwright William Clyde Fitch’s mother donated many of his books and the furnishings of his study to the College, recreating his personal study in the Clyde Fitch Memorial Room in Converse Hall.
      
      While at Amherst, Fitch was active in dramatic productions, often taking female roles. Among his plays—Fitch wrote more than 60 plays, including 36 original scripts—his comedies were the most popular. He still holds the record for having the most plays running concurrently on Broadway (four). Critic and scholar William Lyron Phelps wrote in 1921, “when [Fitch] began to write, American drama scarcely existed; when he died it was reality.... He did more for American drama than any other man in our history.”
      
      Fitch's books, manuscripts, personal papers and furnishings are now housed in Archives and Special Collections.

       

      Born: May 2, 1865, Elmira, N.Y.
      Died: Sept. 4, 1909

      Selected Works: The Climbers, Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, The Girl with the Green Eyes, The Truth, The City

   10. Moore Residence Hall

       David Foster Wallace ’85

       When David Foster Wallace was a first-year student at Amherst living in Moore Residence Hall, one of his roommates recalls that he opened the windows of their room and shouted out, “I love it here!”
       
       In an interview with the College alumni magazine, he wrote, “It was at Amherst, with its high expectations and brilliant profs and banzai workload, that I loved to read and write and think.” A self-described late bloomer, Wallace also recalled being “terrified” at Amherst, relying on “obsessive studying … that was a way to hide from people, to try to earn—through ‘achievement’ or whatever—permission to be at Amherst that I was too self-centered to realize I’d already received when they accepted me.” In his sophomore year, he lived in Moore 220, one of the smallest doubles on campus, with friend Mark Costello ’84. Their room was adjacent to the TV pit where Wallace watched episodes of Hill Street Blues and Hawaii Five-0. Later, Wallace lived in Moore 114, a single, where he wrote much of his two senior theses, in philosophy and English, the latter published as the novel The Broom of the System in 1987. Reportedly Wallace’s neighbor in Moore was forced to move her bed away from the wall they shared, because the sound of his typewriter kept her awake late into the night.
       
       Read “Brief Interview with a Five Draft Man,” in Amherst magazine.
       
       

       Born: Feb. 21, 1962, Ithaca, N.Y.
       Died: Sept. 12, 2008

       Selected Works: Infinite Jest, The Pale King, Consider the Lobster, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments 

       Selected Awards: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Salon Book Award, Lannan Literary Award, Whiting Award, Time Magazine’s Best Books of the Year (Fiction), Inclusion in the O. Henry Prize Stories.
       Nomination: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
       
       Find more alumni authors in the Amherst Reads online book club, where you can read excerpts, hear interviews and more.

   11. Lipton House

       Dan Brown ’86 Back in the 1980s no one knew that Lipton House (previously known as Hamilton House), an unassuming brick building on College Street, was home to a student who would go on to sell over 200 million books that have been translated into 57 languages, but this is where Dan Brown, one of the best-selling novelists of all time, in fact lived.
       
       While at Amherst, Brown played squash, sang in the Amherst Glee Club and was a writing student of visiting novelist Alan Lelchuk. Graduating in 1986, Brown dabbled briefly in a music career then began teaching English at his alma mater Phillips Exeter Academy in 1993. After the publication of his first novel, Digital Fortress, Brown published Angels & Demons, his first book to feature Harvard University professor of religious iconology and symbology Robert Langdon. The second Langdon book, The Da Vinci Code, was released in 2003 and went on to become an international best seller that was adapted into a popular film. Adaptations of Angels & Demons and his 2013 novel Inferno followed.
       
       “Writing thrillers is a lot like writing music. (I am a failed musician.) A symphony is about structure, theme, tempo, pacing and ambience; all these things are critical to writing a novel,” Brown explains in a 2013 interview with Amherst Magazine. “Writing is about creating tension and release. Can they stop this virus? What does this code mean? Are they going to get away? If I’ve done my job well, these individual bits of tension will pull a reader through the entire book.”
       

        

       Visit Amherst Reads for more information about Dan Brown, and listen to an interview with the author.

       
       

       Born: June 22, 1964, Exeter, N.H. 

       Selected Works: Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol, Inferno

   12. Emily Dickinson Museum

       Emily Dickinson Museum

       While Emily Dickinson never attended Amherst, which was all-male at the time, her life and writing are deeply rooted in the College’s history. Her grandfather spent so much of the family’s money helping to found the College that the Dickinsons were compelled to sell the 1813 Homestead that he had built on Main Street, and needed several years to regain their financial security, and their home. Dickinson’s father Edward served 37 years as the school’s treasurer, and the annual Commencement Tea was always served at their homestead. Dickinson herself, who began writing poetry as a teenager, composed the majority of her work between 1855 and 1865. She produced almost 1,800 poems, many of which were written at her bedroom desk in the Homestead. Although much of Dickinson’s writing remained unpublished during her lifetime, a few of her poems were printed anonymously in local publications, and the February 1850 edition of the Amherst College student publication The Indicator published a Valentine’s Day-themed letter by Dickinson.
       
       Visit the Emily Dickinson Museum website to learn about the museum and find information about programs and tours.

        

       Born: Dec. 10, 1830, Amherst, Mass.
       Died: May 15, 1886