As a student at the Edgartown School, a counselor once told Chappaquiddick native Stephanie Duckworth-Elliott that she wouldn’t go to college, and implied that Ms. Duckworth-Elliott would not achieve in life. The young girl had a background and home life that already separated her from other kids her age — she was a member of the only Wampanoag family living on Chappy at the time, and raised primarily by her grandfather — and the counselor’s prediction made her feel even more detached from her peers.
Writer Ben Greenman so craves human contact as part of his routine that he edits the front section of The New Yorker.
His fiction, including his latest novel, Please Step Back, he boxes off in the mornings and evenings at his Brooklyn home, between raising his five and eight year-old sons. Then he takes the subway into Manhattan and begins to put together the listings and features that make up Goings On, the weekly events guide of the globally-renowned magazine. It’s a job he has held for 10 years.
David McCullough, Pulitzer-prizewinning author of The Path Between the Seas, Truman, John Adams and 1776, is working on a new book, set for release in 2010. The as-yet-untitiled tome chronicles the remarkable history of innovation and achievement in the fields literature, medicine, design and the arts by Americans living in Paris.
New York University Professor Dr. Carol Gilligan will discuss her new book, The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance and Democracy’s Future, on Wednesday, August 26 at 5:30 p.m. at the Chilmark Public Library.
John Sundman is a Tisbury-based science fiction writer. He has recently self-published his third book, The Pains, a dark, satirical vision of 1984 America that blends George Orwell’s classic dystopia with a surreal version of the real-life Reagan-era. According to the author, it is a “story of faith in a world that appears to be falling apart. It tells the story of Norman Lux, a 24-year-old novitiate in a religious order, who becomes afflicted with something akin to stigmata.”
Charles A. Bartholomy, a seasoned professional fishing captain and former syndicated outdoor columnist, presents Fish Story Extraordinary on Friday, July 17, at 4 p.m. at the Federated Church Parish House in Edgartown
Mr. Bartholomy combines corporate and political intrigue with an American CEO’s quest for success in Cuba’s annual Hemingway Blue Marlin Tournament in his latest book, The Blue.
This Thursday, all are invited to a reading and signing for a book is titled Airlift to America: How Barack Obama Sr, John F. Kennedy, Tom Mboya and 800 East African Students Changed Their World and Ours, written by Tom Shachtman with a foreword by Harry Belafonte. The event Thursday, August 27, from 5 to 7 p.m. at Midnight Farm in Vineyard Haven. Mr. Shachtman will be introduced by Cora Weiss of Aquinnah, who was executive director of the foundation that administered the unique initiative from 1959 to 1963.
In celebration of national poetry month, there will be a reading of 17th century metaphysical poet John Donne at the Old Whaling Church at 4 p.m. on April 19. The program will also include the music of William Byrd and other composers from the English Renaissance. Donne’s work will be read by John Ortman and Elizabeth Villard, who will be joined by Matt Pelikan on recorder and violin, and Jan Hyer on cello.
People who merely have heard about Slow Food — the “eco-gastronomic” movement aimed at counteracting the effects of fast food on American diet, farming and lifestyle — might associate it with the rarified, elite world of famous chefs, expensive foods and politically correct eating that tends to be too dear for regular folk.
Award-winning author Linda Kenney Miller, who wrote Beacon on the Hill, spent her childhood summers at Oak Bluffs. Her grandfather, John A. Kenney, vacationed on the Vineyard ever since 1913 when his wife’s family first bought the Kenney cottage on Huntington avenue.
