Provincetown takes center stage in Jamie Brenner’s latest novel, Summer Longing, a follow-up to The Forever Summer, which is also set here. Brenner writes novels about families and relationships, page-turners […]
Books & Poetry
BOOK REVIEW
Unearthing the Corporate Misdeeds Behind ‘Death in Mud Lick’
Eric Eyre’s intrepid reporting on the opioid epidemic has a timely message
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Eric Eyre braids together two riveting stories in Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic. Numbers are […]
CHILDREN’S LIT
Nancy Burkert’s World of Wondrous Imagery
Her children helped inspire her illustrations
Picture yourself taking an unhurried walk through a wildflower garden with a small child. You slow down as the child examines the curve of a leaf, the shape of a […]
BOOK REVIEW
Diary of a Drag Queen Reveals a Year of Living Dangerously
Crystal a.k.a. Tom Rasmussen’s life is an open book
Drag queens are a familiar part of street life in Provincetown, and thanks to stars such as RuPaul and his Drag Race reality show, they’ve become a familiar part of […]
SOCIAL STUDIES
Ulrich Beck’s Prescient ‘Risk Society’
When living under a state of emergency becomes the norm
In a matter of weeks, reality has lost its familiar form. Invisible threats fill the air, smearing door handles and packaging, reshaping even the most minor intimacies — the touch […]
MEMOIRS
A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Man
In Later, Paul Lisicky recalls his early days in Provincetown
Paul Lisicky could not have known that his newest book would be released in the midst of a global pandemic. And yet it’s apropos that the publication of Later: My […]
PUBLISHING
How Robert Winter Found His Happy Ending
Meet Provincetown’s gay romance writer and publisher
Of the billion-dollar romance novel publishing business, gay male romance books make up a small fraction — $20 million. But for a one-man imprint like Robert Winter Books, it’s a […]
BOOK REVIEW
Four Reporters Who Shook the World
Nancy Cott’s Fighting Words recalls those who wrote history in the making
It is generally accepted that what news reporters write is consigned to obscurity. Journalism from long ago may be useful for documenting a certain time or place, but, otherwise, the […]
FICTION
Hanna Pylväinen Explores Her Northern Roots
The FAWC fellow returns to Provincetown to finish her second novel
Hanna Pylväinen’s research has taken her around the world, from the suburbs of Detroit to the wildest reaches of the Arctic Circle. A second-year fiction fellow at the Fine Arts […]
AT THE LIBRARY
Small-time Gangsters and World-class Wordplay
Which is better, the book or the movie? In this case, the jury is out about the movie Motherless Brooklyn, but the book, by Jonathan Lethem, is stunningly good. That’s […]
Shelter in Place
The new mantra Find a shelter How easily demanded by those in power Stay there Open yourself to alone Become someone else now Someone who can live Without order Or […]
BOOKS
Writing Is No Mystery to Christopher Bollen
The author of A Beautiful Crime talks about creating compelling gay characters
Christopher Bollen has written a seductive and cold-blooded tale of deception with his latest book, A Beautiful Crime, published by Harper Books in late January. As he did in The […]
BOOK REVIEW
Unequal Protection Under the Law
Adam Cohen’s Supreme Inequality finds the Court guilty of ruling unfairly
Forty-seven years ago this month, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell concluded that the state of Texas did not have to remedy inequalities in school funding across deeply segregated school […]
BOOK REVIEW
Paul Weidlinger: A Brilliant Engineer Split in Two by Exile
The Restless Hungarian: Modernism, Madness, and the American Dream by Tom Weidlinger
Perched on stilts, the Weidlinger house on Wellfleet’s Higgins Pond peers out from the surrounding green like a wide pinhole camera. This camera-like impression echoes the Marcel Breuer house nearby, […]
READINGS
The Real-Life Tale of a Violent Queer Relationship
Carmen Maria Machado reveals all with literary flair
In her new book, In the Dream House: A Memoir, Carmen Maria Machado flips the discussion of domestic abuse on its ear. She writes of her own traumatic experience in […]
