The Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing has begun its summer program of workshops for writers. As a bonus for those of us who have not signed up for workshops, the institute will be holding fiction and poetry readings throughout the next month at various locations around the Island.

But tonight, July 12, from 5 to 6 p.m. the head honcho, creative mastermind and wordsmith in his right, Alexander Weinstein, the director of the program, will be reading at the charter school in West Tisbury.

In addition to running writing workshops on the Island during the summer, Mr. Weinstein is a professor at Siena Heights University in Michigan. He is a graduate of Indiana University’s MFA program and Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and has been working as a creative writing teacher and freelance editor for the past ten years.

Poet Keith Leonard also reads tonight. Mr. Leonard teaches creative writing at Indiana University where he serves as poetry editor of Indiana Review. He is the recipient of the 2010 Vera Meyer Strube Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2009, DIAGRAM, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Laurel Review, Quarterly West, and Sentence.

For more details about the summer workshop and for a full list of readings and events, visit mvicw.com.