Classic UMass Television Series ‘Fine Print’ Restored and Now Available Online

The popular television series "Fine Print," which interviewed many of the award-winning authors who were teaching at UMass Amherst in the 1990s, has been restored and digitally archived online by the UMass Libraries Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center.

"Fine Print" provided an intimate look at the writers, their work and their creative process. In each half-hour episode, the authors read from their work and talk candidly about their lives, why they write, how they got started, how they react to editors and critics, and the joys and struggles of writing.

Among the authors interviewed on the program included winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Guggenheim, National Book and PEN awards, as well as many other honors. Episodes featured John Edgar Wideman, Martin Espada, Agha Shahid Ali, James Tate, Julius Lester, Dara Wier, Jay Neugeboren, Paul Mariani, Sonia Nieto, Patricia Wright and Noy Holland.

Featured on local and regional cable stations and was seen in more than 40 cities and towns in Massachusetts and Connecticut, "Fine Print" was produced by Liane Brandon while she was a faculty member in the College of Education and co-director of UMass Educational Television (UMET). Each episode of the series, which ran from 1995-98 was directed by Brandon, now emerita professor, and Scott Perry, who served as coordinator of UMET.

Founded in 1993 as a media outreach project of the UMass Amherst School of Education, UMET's mission was to provide the public with innovative, original, educational programming using the resources of the school and the university, and to serve as a hands-on learning laboratory for students and teachers. In its years of operation, UMET trained close to 100 undergraduate interns and 15 graduate teaching assistants, and its shows also involved many residents of Western Massachusetts in its productions.

All of the restored episodes of "Fine Print," can now be viewed on the SCUA website, and the UMET website is still online at umass.edu/umet offering a peek back in time at the project and its many programs.