Best CELEBRATING THE 2025 BEST OF THE VALLEY READERS’ POLL WINNERS ...

PEXELS/Lisa Fotios No matter how hard I think about it, I can’t dream up a plausible public health or safety rationale for dividing the market between tobacco sellers, alcohol sellers, and weed ...

STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS Not that long ago, right here in our Valley, a woman, thought to be a witch, was brutalized and left for dead. But she survived. She is buried in the Old Hadley Cemetery. I ...

Alongtime member of and influential figure in the Valley’s jazz scene recently hit the national spotlight. Paul Arslanian, co-founder of the Northampton Jazz Workshop, has been named one of 33 “Jazz ...

“Emily’s mission in life is to teach women to live with confidence and joy inside their bodies.” This sentence mesmerized me. Ryan Lash/TED Emily Nagoski speaks at TED 2018. It’s an assured statement ...

“There is something that happens in [a concert venue] that is like nothing else I ever experienced,” singer-songwriter Linda Shear says. “And I need it, and I hope that I give something to some of the ...

Despite certain advances in medieval historiography, there is still a general assumption that the middle ages were a period of despair, a time when the innovations of the Roman Empire crumbled, a ...

Bellower vocalist Tom Peake performs during the first live music event at The Heavy Culture Cooperative in Easthampton, Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026. DANIEL JACOBI II / Staff Photo ...

“Raphaella – Queen of Healing,” by Martha May, a member of The Fiberistas, on display at the Hosmer Gallery at Forbes Library in Northampton, Tuesday, April 7, 2026. DANIEL JACOBI II / Staff Photo ...

Acclaimed folk-blues singer-songwriter Chris Smither, who lives in Amherst, never expected to be cast in a Netflix movie — and he certainly never expected to be part of a project that won an Oscar.

Gina Napolitano of Connecticut is a 2016 alumna of the MacDuffie School in Granby and is a senior at Wheaton College. Photographed Saturday, July 13, 2019, in Northampton. When Gina Rose Napolitano ...

When she looks back at how her band first found its footing, Nerissa Nields sees one club in particular at the center of that story: the Iron Horse Music Hall. From the time The Nields, the Valley ...