“Narrative weaves through many aspects of our lives in ways we are often not even aware of,” says the Turkish-born writer Zeynep Özakat. Her first novel, which she is working […]
Books & Poetry
POETS
Writing of the Past, for the Future
Laura Cresté’s poems explore complex family dynamics
Laura Cresté still has Mead notebooks full of the nature poems she started writing around age six. She wrote one after watching a seagull attack a crab while on the […]
WRITERS
The Internet as a Place of Fracture and Connection
For Tracy Fuad, identity transcends geographic borders
Tracy Fuad was born the same month as the internet: March 1989. In her most recent poetry collection, about:blank, published in October, she describes the web as a bridge between […]
WRITERS
De-Generalizing the ‘Native Experience’
A FAWC fellow writes of growing up on the Blackfeet Reservation
“There’s very little legitimate literature about Native people,” says Fine Arts Work Center writing fellow Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, who grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. “It wasn’t until I […]
WRITERS
For Shastri Akella, Telling Stories Is a Labor of Love
An Indian-born author finds his queer identity in his prose
Shastri Akella’s first novel, The Sea Elephants, begins with these lines: “My father left the country the year my sisters were born. He returned six months after I watched them […]
LINE BREAK
Mad Libs Poetry: A Starter Kit
Swapping noun for noun, verb for verb, to create something new
Poets build poems within the shells of earlier work, caterpillar to moth. We learn to write by reading and echoing until something clicks that feels genuine and new. I love […]
WRITERS
In His Poems, Eduardo Martinez-Leyva Discovers Who He Is
A journey from West Texas to Provincetown and back
“I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas,” says Eduardo Martinez-Leyva, a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown who will give an online poetry reading on […]
IN THE STACKS
Every Child Is an Artist (and Vice Versa)
Juliet Kepes’s Bauhaus mural adorns the Wellfleet Public Library
There’s some serious art hanging in the kids’ section of the Wellfleet Public Library. A mural by Juliet Kepes features stylized animals cavorting on washy fields of color. It’s light […]
BOOK REVIEW
In Unthinkable, Memory Is Vital
A year later, Jamie Raskin reckons with his son’s suicide and the Jan. 6 insurrection
Congressman Jamie Raskin’s new memoir is about surviving the end of his world, and a warning about preventing the end of ours. On Dec. 31, 2020, his brilliant and empathetic […]
LINE BREAK
Digging Dugan
A poem in which what seems dark and bleak becomes, somehow, hopeful
Poetry is an invitation to slow down and think more deeply about experiences, observations, perplexities, beauties, enragements, and delights. Good poetry helps us see more honestly and accurately. Sometimes poems […]
BOOK REVIEW
A Life Full of Music, and More
The trailblazing cellist with a dancing soul
Carol Procter was only the third woman cellist hired by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The Boston Symphony Orchestra year was 1965, and Procter was in her early 20s, recently graduated […]
BOOKS
Humanizing the People Behind an Epic Case
Joshua Prager’s The Family Roe is praised by both sides of abortion debate
Joshua Prager was hitting one dead end after another in 2010. A former senior writer for the Wall Street Journal and the co-founder of Provincetown’s Twenty Summers series, Prager was […]
BOOK REVIEW
Meditations on the Tangled Cords of Jewish History
Dara Horn reckons with an anti-Semitic past and present
Organizations including the Pew Research Center, Anti-Defamation League, and American Jewish Committee all report an increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the last several years. These incidents have ranged from Holocaust […]
HUMANITY
The Wondrous Words of Hilde Oleson
At 98, she is still inspiring others to write
“I’m almost a hundred years old,” says poet Hilde Oleson from her room at Seashore Point in Provincetown. “I’m not going to make myself a famous author, and that doesn’t […]
BOOK REVIEW
For Alan Cumming, Fame Is Part and Parcel
Baggage, his second memoir, has plenty of stories
I remember reading long ago that actor Alan Cumming threw great parties. This bit of trivia tucked in my brain re-emerged as I dove into his second memoir, Baggage: Tales […]
