Morning Glory Cookbook Takes the Cake

Morning Glory Farm and the Family that Feeds an Island, the story of the largest farm on Martha’s Vineyard, has been named the best local cuisine cookbook in the United States by the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. The award has placed it into the running for the best in the world award in this category, to be announced in February in Paris.

The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards is an internationally recognized organization that holds the world’s largest cookbook and drinks book trade fair every year. This year, 6,000 books were submitted.

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Chappy Native Pens Kids’ Book, Talks About Growing Up Different
Megan Dooley

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.

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Spielberg Hooks Rights to Derby Book
Mark Alan Lovewell

The Vineyard may yet be the scene of another big fish film under the eye of Steven Spielberg: the Jaws director’s studio, DreamWorks, has just bought the film rights for a soon to be released book about the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.

The book, The Big One: An Island, an Obsession and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish, by David Kinney, published by Atlantic Monthly, will be released on April 8.

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Film Noir Father Leaves Book To Library, Ending Up to You
Holly Nadler

When authors die, some of their work lives after them. In or out of print, it’s bound and sitting on shelves. But another chunk of inventory survives the author, often to the chagrin of his or her heirs: unpublished or unfinished manuscripts. What to do with this material?

Writer, director and theatre maestro Jon Lipsky, of West Tisbury, was confronted with just such a dilemma when his father, author Eleazar Lipsky (1911-1993), left behind a stack of research books and a synopsis for a riveting historical saga.

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Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Sees Boomers Redefining Retirement
Holly Nadler

As a prize-winning sociologist and Harvard professor of education, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot possesses the curriculum vitae of one of the most successful women alive — in that achievement-oriented way that we worship in the ambitious classes of America. And yet she radiates the serenity and contemplative qualities of a genuine holy woman.

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Mr. Dresser Offers Tommy’s Tour of the Sixties
Julian Wise

IN MY LIFE. By Thomas Dresser. Red Lead Press. Spring 2009. $17, softcover.

Young love in the sixties. These five words summarize In My Life, the brief, quirky and charming novel by local author Thomas Dresser. Set against the backdrop of the turmoil of the bygone decade, In My Life tells the story of Rusty and Jodie, two teenagers in central Massachusetts whose blossoming love is colored by the sexual revolution, rock and roll, and the draft board.

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Comic Book Talk

Comic Book Talk

Eisner Award winning New Yorker cartoonist Paul Karasik will talk about and sign his book, You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks, Volume II, at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven at 7 p.m. Of the previous volume edited by Mr. Karasik, the notorious Robert Crumb said “I must have this book for my library.” For details, call 508-693-2291.

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Island Historian Reveals New Book

Island Historian

Reveals New Book

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.

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Feminist Lecture

Feminist Lecture

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.

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Gonzo Sci-Fi Writer Creates The Pains in Tisbury
Cooper Davis

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.”

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