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 […]
Books & Poetry
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 […]
WRITERS
For H.R. Webster, the Poetical Is Political
Writing as “an act of radical imagination”
H.R. Webster has a poem provocatively titled “Failure.” “I have made fun of the way language/ is always finding its own end,” she writes. “I have made fun of these […]
READING ROOM
What Do You Wish For?
At the Provincetown library, a migration story
Wishes is a children’s book written by Muon Thi Van and illustrated by Victo Ngai. It chronicles one family’s migration from Vietnam. It was chosen by children in both the […]
LINE BREAK
Not Just Another Poem About the Moon
Donika Kelly writes of ‘feelings,’ namely love
I have a lot of feelings and always have. In fact, it’s why I began writing poems in high school. Feelings! So many feelings. Feelings that needed a safe place […]
WRITERS
That Feeling of Silent Communion With a Place
Far from Nepal, Samyak Shertok finds his home in poetry
“They came unarmed. They came/ half-masked. They came/ before the crow. They came/ with the moon. They came/ moonless. They came/ out of rain. They came/ as their enemy. They […]
WRITERS
Molly Anders’s Characters Confess All
‘Funny accounts of downfall’ from a childhood filled with AA meetings
A huge water heater lives in the middle of writer Molly Anders’s tiny kitchen. “This is Louis,” she says, gesturing as she makes coffee. She says all the other Fine […]
