Susan Dimock was a celebrated surgeon in the 19th century who died in a shipwreck in 1875 at age 28. In her short life she’d become a light of her […]
Books & Poetry
IN THE WOODS
Poets From Mexico Build New Worlds in Wellfleet
A Modern House Trust residency on development and design
WELLFLEET — When five Mexican and Mexican-American poets, artists, and architects arrived at the modernist houses that dot the seashores and backwoods here in early October, they had “the best […]
THE INTERVIEW
The Provincetown Writer Who’s Watching You
Heidi Jon Schmidt draws universal truths from life in one small town
You may be checking out at the grocery store, strolling with a friend, or waiting in line for the ATM. You’re talking to the people around you or just staring […]
ARTISTS AND WRITERS
New Kids on the Block
20 fellows arrive at the Fine Arts Work Center
On Pearl Street in Provincetown, the Fine Arts Work Center’s new fellows are settling into their apartments and studios. For now, the spaces are all but empty. The white, unadorned […]
BOOKS
Charles Busch’s Life as a Leading Lady
Just don’t call him a drag queen
Charles Busch — the renowned “male actress” of stage and film, playwright of dozens of shows including Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, which ran for five years off-Broadway, and the Broadway […]
BOOKS
In ‘How to Live,’ Kelle Groom Investigates the Meaning of Home
A Provincetown poet’s new memoir is an odyssey toward compassion
The moment Kelle Groom opens the gray door to her second-floor Brewster Street apartment, a hold-onto-your-hats breeze marking the change in seasons sneaks through. Poetry collections by Nick Flynn, Marie […]
WOMEN’S WEEK
Katherine Ann Power’s Story of Surrender and Redemption
Still looking to change the world, aware that ‘deep change takes time’
Katherine Ann Power is 74 years old and happily married to her wife of 15 years. She’s a proud grandmother. She has just gotten her hair cut, and on this […]
PROVINCETOWN BOOK FESTIVAL
Bending Gender, Genre, and Reality’s Fabric
In Isle McElroy’s fiction, identity is volatile, permeable, and relational
In a country of unpredictable roving “man hordes” reported to have “mowed twenty-six lawns in Drain, Illinois” and “kicked a German shepherd to death in Plano, Texas,” a canceled feminist […]
PROVINCETOWN BOOK FESTIVAL
A Maiden Voyage for an ‘Aging Pervert’
Janet W. Hardy’s radical queer savvy comes to Provincetown
By a strange twist of fate, the Provincetown Book Festival, hosted by the public library and running Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 this year, always seems to happen the same […]
BOOKS
Alice Hoffman Sounds an Echo of Hawthorne’s Warning
Her latest novel is a meditation on The Scarlet Letter
Alice Hoffman’s short story titled “Property Of” was published in the prestigious literary journal American Review: The Magazine of New Writing in 1975 when Hoffman was 23. I read the […]
THE INTERVIEW
How Patti Hartigan Came to Write August Wilson’s Story
The longtime arts journalist finished her biography of the playwright in Provincetown
Eight years ago, the arts journalist and critic Patti Hartigan noticed something missing from the cultural landscape. August Wilson, a playwright whose works she cherished and had written about for […]
EARS WIDE OPEN
Poetry for the People, by the People
A spontaneous evening at the People’s Poetry Parlor
On a mid-August night, amateur and published poets, locals and tourists, pour into the Somerset House Inn in downtown Provincetown and take seats on an array of couches and deep […]
BOOKS
Raising the Spirits of the Living and Dead
Adam Berry’s book on coping with grief
Adam Berry arrived in Provincetown 20 years ago as a Boston Conservatory sophomore to star in the Provincetown Theater Company’s production of Hair. An Alabama native, he didn’t know anything about […]
WORDS
Tyne and the Town
Emmy and Tony-winning actress Tyne Daly in three evenings of benefit readings
Tyne Daly might be best known to a certain generation of audiences for her costarring role as down-to-earth cop and working mom Mary Beth Lacey in the mid-1980s television show […]
BOOKS
Escaping Virginia: The Education of Drew Gilpin Faust
Harvard’s first woman president talks about her about-to-be-published memoir
“Dear Mr. Eisenhower, I am nine years old and I am white.” These were the opening words of a letter protesting racism in American public education that Catharine Drew Gilpin […]
