“There’s all this beauty around you,” Frank X. Gaspar says of the Provincetown he grew up in in the 1950s and ’60s. “Not a gentle beauty but a rugged beauty.” […]
Books & Poetry
BOOK REVIEW
A Clear-Eyed History of a Collective Bacchanal
Ike Williams navigates The Shores of Bohemia
The history of the Outer Cape is notable. This narrow strip of sand has hosted wave after wave of wanderers and settlers who, since the “first encounter” with the Nauset […]
BOOK REVIEW
A Painter and Minister Embraces New Colors
In her memoir, the Rev. Anne Ierardi explores faith, her upbringing, and her sexual identity
In her memoir, Anne Ierardi chooses to paint in contrasting colors, literally and figuratively. “If you’re just Catholic, and you never walk into a Protestant church and have a conversation, […]
BOOK REVIEW
Refusing to Go Gentle Into The Kingdom of Sand
Andrew Holleran’s new novel is a latter-day queer classic
In his new novel, Andrew Holleran writes, in a scene set at a North Florida Thanksgiving dinner attended by older gay men, “There is a delicate undercurrent beneath get-togethers among […]
LINE BREAK
Rereading History in Poetry
John Bonanni explores the truth of ‘Patient O’
When I was a kid, history class bored me. It was all dusty, musty dates, laws, and names. I have a hunch I’d have been more interested if I’d been […]
BOOK REVIEW
Discovering Hope in the Midst of Terror
In Vigil Harbor, Julia Glass’s characters face their own mistakes
Julia Glass has never set out to write a political novel. “But if I write about contemporary life,” she says, “my characters are going to intersect with politics. Something is […]
MARATHON
Finding Theater, Blubber, and Community in Moby-Dick
A town reads aloud for everything from esoteric insights on blubber to racy bits
PROVINCETOWN — “We don’t want thunder, we want rum!” bellowed reader Larry Williams, channeling the urgency of a stormy scene from Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. When […]
FICTION
Twists of Fate That Aren’t Simple
Randi Triant’s new novel, What We Give, What We Take, traces the lives of a mother and son
“I’ve known women and men — it’s kind of genderless — who think they’re making the right decision, then realize it was one of the worst,” says Provincetown author Randi […]
BOOK REVIEW
Why Writing About Writing Matters
Nicholas Delbanco shares wisdom from his literary life
You, reader of the Independent, grasping a newspaper or squinting at your laptop, probably already believe that writing matters. But not everyone does. Defending the written word’s worth is exactly […]
READING ROOM
Family Trees
Around the world on a story walk in Eastham
Vanessa Van Ryswood, who lives in Eastham, recommends We Planted a Tree, a poem by Diane Muldrow. The illustrations are by Bob Staake, who lives in Chatham. In the book, […]
LINE BREAK
Mad Libs Poetry: Getting Lost in the Making
Sim Fidel shares a shift drink with Pablo Neruda
One thing I love about the Outer Cape is how, more often than not, the person working at the grocery store, gas station, library, restaurant, hardware store, or coffee shop […]
CLOSE LISTENING
A Thousand-Year-Old Text Enters the Auditory Realm
J. Keith Vincent’s new abridged translation of The Pillow Book
A thousand years ago, Sei Shōnagon set down on paper her wry observations of court life in Kyoto, the capital of Heian Japan. What was awkward to Sei? “The back […]
BOOKS
A Walk in Thoreau’s Shoes
Ben Shattuck finds transcendence in the people met along the way
Beginning in the Cape’s dunes, Ben Shattuck’s Six Walks is a meditation on nature in Henry David Thoreau’s footsteps. Desperate to escape recurring nightmares, Shattuck turns Thoreau’s Cape Cod into […]
WRITERS
Vedran Husić Is Searching for Meaning
The returning FAWC fellow writes of love and grief
“This place will always be a part of my life, more so than I ever imagined,” says the writer Vedran Husić. “The work that I’m doing here is so meaningful […]
BOOK REVIEW
Landscape as ‘Poetic Space’
How artists and thinkers influenced America and its politics
Considering the origins of the Cape Cod National Seashore in 1961 doesn’t usually bring Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 19th-century transcendentalist, to mind. Or artists, either. In local imagination, the origin […]
