Last month’s pre-Christmas storm is one we’ll be remembering for years. The damage to homes, businesses, and infrastructure is heartbreaking and terrifying. Wildlife, too, took a beating, with many sea […]
Books & Poetry
BOOKS
Samuel Adams, Fake News, and the Founding of America
In a new biography, Stacy Schiff recovers the ‘Machiavelli of chaos’ who made the revolution
In their affectionate geriatric correspondence, old political rivals Thomas Jefferson and John Adams agreed that it was “difficult to say at what moment the revolution began.” Was it in 1765, […]
BOOKS
‘The Passenger’ Misses the Plot
Cormac McCarthy’s first novel in 16 years is ‘portentous’ — and pretentious
Cormac McCarthy’s novels like Blood Meridian, his 1985 story about twisted characters annihilating one another in a mythic American West, reveal a smart, dark view of humanity. Now 89, McCarthy […]
BOOKS
Going Out in Search of Identity
Jeremy Atherton Lin’s memoir looks back at the gay bars that made him who he is
Jeremy Atherton Lin’s Gay Bar: Why We Went Out is a memoir of a booze- and sex-soaked search for identity. Despite the subtitle, it’s really about why he went out: […]
BOOK REVIEW
When Women Rule the Workplace
The story of the workers and organizers who inspired a movement and a hit movie
While the phrase “workin’ 9 to 5” immediately evokes the bouncy vocals of Dolly Parton, her song — and the movie it was written for — are indebted to a […]
TRADITIONS
Art That Sustains and Perseveres
A new book explores how the Wampanoag connect the spiritual and the material
Most cultural histories of Cape Cod begin with Charles Hawthorne’s establishment of an art school in Provincetown in 1899. But Lee Roscoe knows the story is much older than that. […]
LINE BREAK
Pilgrims in Provincetown
Robert Strong queries colonial legacy on the Outer Cape
The overlapping stories of the Outer Cape are so thick and rich that it’s hard to hear them all: Nauset and Wampanoag people, Viking explorers, Basque fishermen, other European explorers, […]
LINE BREAK
Mad Libs Poetry: From Primrose to Precambrian
Debbie Nadolney considers deep time via a poem by Rita Dove
Debbie Nadolney is someone most art lovers (or music lovers, or convergence lovers) in Provincetown know. She arrived on the local gallery scene in 2012 when she opened AMP — […]
BOOK REVIEW
Faith and Food Connect in Koshersoul
Finding identity — and community — in “the cuisine of the chocolate chosen.”
Michael W. Twitty’s Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew comes to a boil slowly. For readers interested in the intersection of identity, food, and cooking, […]
FELLOWSHIP
Meet the 2022-23 FAWC Writing Fellows
A diverse coterie of writers arrives in Provincetown for a seven-month stint
Ten writers — poets, essayists, novelists, and memoirists — arrived in Provincetown earlier this month to begin their seven-month-long fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center. FAWC fellowship writing coordinator […]
BOOK REVIEW
Bouncing Through the Filth
With Liarmouth, John Waters — screenwriter, director, visual artist, and cultural icon — adds novelist to his résumé
Anyone from John Waters’s legion of fans may be forgiven for cracking the spine of Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance with some trepidation. Has time mellowed his edges? Is a softer, […]
POETRY
Students and Vets Join Forces for Peace
Young poets reflect on loss, fear, and hope
In her poem “Peace,” Ana Maldacker, a seventh-grade student in the Provincetown Schools’ International Baccalaureate program, describes an image of loss: An empty carriage in a town square, as a […]
LINE BREAK
Afloat at Land’s End
Maria Nazos’s ‘Cape Cod Pantoum’
For all the beauty of the Outer Cape, for all the luck we feel to live in this gorgeous place, it isn’t all dreamy sunsets and fabulous gatherings. Not all […]
BOOK REVIEW
Resetting the Holy Atonement Button
A rabbi offers a way to find forgiveness in a difficult world
It is hard at the moment not to feel that there is no way out — individually, communally, or globally — of the shameful mess that is life. And yet […]
PROVINCETOWN BOOK FESTIVAL
Ruth Ozeki on Bringing Books to Life
The acclaimed novelist conjures a dreamscape in her latest book
Ruth Ozeki spoke about her latest novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, winner of the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction, at last weekend’s Provincetown Book Festival. It was her […]
