STCC students were amazing, hard-working, and getting educated against-all-odds! I loved spending the morning reading to them from Pretend I'm Your Friend and talking to them about their dreams, and how hard it is to make them come true....but how worthwhile. Look at this crazy huge auditorium.

When you have two hometowns, you get two hometown reviews!  This is actually just a nice mention in The Daily Hampshire Gazette at https://goo.gl/lyVG7S

Northampton writer MB Caschetta got national attention a few years ago when her debut novel, “Miracle Girls,” received a write-up in People magazine and a few other places. The book also won the 2015 USA Best Book Award for Literary Fiction,
In “Pretend I’m Your Friend,” Caschetta has collected new short stories, as well as previously published ones, and she offers the same mix of humor, darkness and off-beat characters that defined “Miracle Girls.”
In “Sorry Mrs. Robinson,” an older woman who receives a cancer diagnosis flashes back to an affair she’d had years ago and wishes for a moment that one of her daughters was the one facing illness, not her: “She was an awful person. And that was why.”
In “Marry Me Quickly, “ a family’s dark secrets come spilling out at the wedding of one of the siblings. And in “People Say Thank You,” a woman with extrasensory visions accidentally gives her philandering husband her blessing.
“I can’t remember when I’ve read a collection so full of life,” says one reviewer of Caschetta’s stories. “Actual life: the bad jokes, the astounding velocity, the sweetness and darkness.”
MB Caschetta reads from “Pretend I’m Your Friend” Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Broadside Books in Northampton.

I somehow let the Ptown Banner publish a photo of me opening my first box of books in my pajamas.  Hmmm....I make some unwise decisions, don't I?  That said, here's a link to the wonderfully layered review!

​My first book video ever. Check it out here.  Shout out to my friend Gabe Gullbergh and his Freelance Art magic. Work with him if you want a cool video for your book: email

<<There are, I suppose, stories full of brilliance, hilarity, and longing--the stories in MB Caschetta's terrific Pretend You're My Friend are full of all these things--but I can't remember when I've read a collection so full of life. Actual life: the bad jokes, the astounding velocity, the sweetness and darkness. You will love the characters here the way you love your own family: complicatedly, with tenderness, understanding, and consternation. The only difference may be how willing--and eager--you are to introduce them to friends. Good heavens, this book is good. >>  --Elizabeth McCracken, author of Thunderstruck