[Music]
Hi everyone. Michael Elliott, president of Amherst College here with Between 2 Mammoths, and today I'm delighted
we have Olive Amdur, senior, who is with us and who is associated with LitFest, Amherst, College's
literary festival. Olive, how did you become involved in LitFest? So, Amherst College has a
professional literary magazine that's based mostly out of Frost Library but also you know we
roam the campus. It's called The Common, and The Common is one of the co-sponsors, co-organizers
of LitFest, and I am currently what's called the Thomas E. Wood Fellow at The Common. I've been
working there for three years now, so it's been a while. We do behind the scenes
planning for the whole event. Terrific. So you've been involved with LitFest during your time at
Amherst. Do you have a favorite LitFest moment? My first year at LitFest I signed up for one of the
the craft talks. Every author who comes will give an hour-long class for students about
fiction practice or poetry or non-fiction. I signed up for one, and I got a
confirmation email that I would be with Susan Choi who was the 2019 National book award winner
in fiction who is just a fantastic novelist. I loved Trust Exercise which was the book that won.
It turned out that this this craft talk was happening in Emily Dickinson's living room. I think
about it a lot. It was also right before we were, for the first time, left for the covid pandemic
so it was my last kind of on campus moment. It's a powerful memory. It is, yeah, it's you know I've been
as a senior thinking about what I'm going to take away and that's definitely one of them. There
are also Poetry Slams, is that right, they're for students only? Yeah, absolutely. We actually, The
Common had one of our interns who graduated last year, Eliza Brewer, I think participated in one,
about two or three during her time, but those happen on I believe Thursday night. It's just
for students so if you write slam poetry or just want to read your work, it's a really great
opportunity to do so. It's you know it's really wonderful, I always think, to see what my classmates
are doing when they're not in classes with me so I really enjoy those. That's terrific.
I understand there's an event beforehand that students can attend and get free copies of the
books of the authors who are coming. Tell me about how that works. Every year we have a tradition of
throwing a little pre-fest trivia event. We are having it in the CHI on February 9th at 7:30 and
it is basically, you know we want to make sure that we know Amherst weekends can be really busy so we
want to make sure that people know the schedule for LitFest, and know who's coming and kind of
can get excited about it beforehand. We have a little event and you can answer trivia questions,
spin the wheel, and get a, win a free book by one of the authors, so it's also a really nice opportunity
to begin getting to know, if you don't know the authors, getting to know their words and their
work before they come so you can ask good questions during their panels or figure out
who you might want to see. Well I'm thrilled. I'm so looking forward to LitFest and it's later in
the month in February, right? Yes, it starts on the 24th I think is the first event but the big
weekend is the 25th. Well, let me ask you something about something entirely different. You live in the
Zoo. I do. And you and your colleagues had me for dinner last fall. It was a real treat for me. So when you
cook in the Zoo ,what's your specialty? I will say I have sort of a boring specialty perhaps. I'm
known as the salad person. We always, we get bulk produce from a place, from a bunch of local
farms so I like to make kind of big bowls of leafy greens and seasonal, you know, I got into an apple
chickpea salad in the fall, and I have yet to cook this winter so I'll sort of see what's around,
but that's my favorite thing to make. Fantastic. Well, Olive Amdur, Common intern, literary enthusiast
and salad person, thank you so much for being with Between 2 Mammoths. Yeah, thank you for having me.