PROVINCETOWN — Mary L. Trump’s book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man sold more copies in one week than her uncle Donald’s […]
Books & Poetry
BOOKS
Queer Romance and Musical Obsession in The Piano Student
Lea Singer’s newly translated novel is historical fiction done right
Next Wednesday, East End Books Ptown is holding a virtual book event on the The Piano Student, with author Lea Singer and translator Elisabeth Lauffer. The novel, newly translated from […]
BOOK REVIEW
In x + y, Eugenia Cheng Envisions a World Without Gender
New terminology would prioritize ‘community over self’
Watch a video clip of mathematician Eugenia Cheng making puff pastry with Stephen Colbert, and you’ll quickly appreciate why her students at the Art Institute of Chicago surely consider themselves […]
BOOK REVIEW
Matthew Yglesias Envisions a Better, Much Bigger America
What we need, he suggests provocatively, is One Billion Americans
Faced with impending climate doom, extreme housing shortages, and a global pandemic that spreads through close human proximity, most people hope Americans will get fewer and farther between. In his […]
QUEER ‘I’
Amid a Pandemic, Revisiting ‘Dancer From the Dance’
Andrew Holleran’s romantic rebels realize the cost of freedom
A million years ago, back in 2016, I sat on a panel at a literary conference in New Orleans. At the time, I was working on my second novel, and […]
BOOK REVIEW
Hugh Raffles’s Relentless Riffs in a Book of Unconformities
Exploring Earthly phenomena in a most encyclopedic way
A long sentence careens through Hugh Raffles’s The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time. At 458 words, the sentence zigzags from a description of a helicopter ride gone wrong […]
POETRY
Gail Mazur’s Ode to Provincetown
A new collection of poems balances loss with renewal
“I knew it was going to make a person uncomfortable the minute they heard I was a poet,” Gail Mazur says. “I was really quite modest in my ambitions. I […]
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Corinne Demas and Artemis Roehrig Help Families Learn Together
The mother-daughter team published two new books during the pandemic
Many children’s book writers find inspiration in their own offspring. Wellfleet resident Corinne Demas, the award-winning author of five novels, two short-story collections, a poetry collection, a memoir, and numerous […]
BOOK REVIEW
Carl Hiaasen to Trump: Squeeze Me
Seeking vengeance for the un-sunshiny state of things
Leave it to satirist Carl Hiaasen to name the house band at Casa Bellicosa “The Collusionists.” Casa Bellicosa, a thinly disguised stand-in for Mar-a-Lago, is the Palm Beach setting at […]
AUTHORS
Cooper Lee Bombardier Turns His Transgender Story Into Art
He’ll give a virtual reading of his new memoir in Provincetown
“Before I knew I was a human being and not a dog, my earliest sense of myself was male. I am just a funny sort of guy. I don’t hate […]
BOOK REVIEW
In Memorial Drive, Poet Natasha Trethewey Revisits Her Mother’s Death
A daughter’s memoir untangles trauma and grapples with festering grief
In “Monument,” a poem in Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey describes watching ants bring soil up from her mother’s grave. “Believe me when I say/ I’ve tried not to begrudge them/ […]
IN MEMORIAM
The Poet of the Dunes Brought Down to Earth
Recalling Harry Kemp on the 60th Anniversary of His Death
Fewer and fewer people these days have a clear idea of who Harry Kemp was. Some might recognize his name from Harry Kemp Way, the road in Provincetown where Outer […]
BOOK REVIEW
The Wild, Weird, Witty Way of Birds
Jennifer Ackerman finds reflections of ourselves at the edges of bird behavior
Long ago, my children and I celebrated at the library whenever we came across a favorite picture book by Arnold Lobel. No matter how many times we read it, The […]
BOOK REVIEW
Sylvia Harvey Shines a Light on The Shadow System
Family stories reveal the ripple effects of incarceration in America
Sylvia A. Harvey, in her book The Shadow System: Mass Incarceration and the American Family, offers a crash course on the gruesome realities of American prisons. Beginning with her own […]
BOOK REVIEW
The Contrasts and Convergence of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
Penial Joseph’s The Sword and the Shield examines the titans of black power and civil rights
In 1972, James Baldwin wrote “The Shot That Echoes Still,” a painful and personal essay for Esquire magazine reflecting on the assassinations of Malcolm X in 1965 and Martin Luther […]
