When Stephen Duncombe started walking to the ponds and jetties of Cape Cod a few years ago, he didn’t plan on doing anything besides starting the long project of teaching […]
Books & Poetry
LINE BREAK
Learning From Lichens
Susie Nielsen explores intuition and influence via a poem by Jane Hirshfield
In our thing-filled culture, our super-documented lives, what happens in the liminal spaces? What happens in those nothing-moments as we leave one place (either physically or mentally) and move toward […]
QUEER ‘I’
Mapp and Lucia and Me
From coastal England to the shores of Provincetown, some things never change
At first glance, it’s a postcard-perfect seaside town, brimming with music, theater, and art. Look closer, though, and you’ll see that beneath the quaint village veneer lies a hotbed of […]
BOOKS
More ‘Less’ May Be Just What We Need Right Now
The sequel to Andrew Sean Greer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is winter comfort reading
Escapism is a form of self-care, and self-care is a high priority right now for Provincetown residents facing months of winter. Good reads — like batteries, chocolate, moisturizer, and canned […]
LINE BREAK
Wind-Scoured and Gleaming
Marge Piercy’s instructions for living
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
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, […]
