Author Fanny Howe is, by her own account, “sort of obsessed with issues of race.” Her father, Mark deWolfe Howe, was a civil rights activist and Ms. Howe, who now lives in West Tisbury, grew up in the slow-burning racial fire of Boston.
Author Fanny Howe is, by her own account, “sort of obsessed with issues of race.” Her father, Mark deWolfe Howe, was a civil rights activist and Ms. Howe, who now lives in West Tisbury, grew up in the slow-burning racial fire of Boston. These experiences culminated in ’Tis of Thee, a work of drama more poetry than play, penned by Ms. Howe, directed by Robert Scanlon and presented by actors Anthony Gaskins, Jill Macy and Charles Turner on Monday evening at the Vineyard Playhouse as part of its Monday Night Special series.
BACKING INTO FORWARD. By Jules Feiffer. Nan. A. Talese / Doubleday, 2010. 464 pages, photographs. $30 hardcover.
Jules Feiffer is one of our icons in the hall of fame that includes Mike Wallace, Beverly Sills, Bill Styron and Walter Cronkite. Island icons are colossi in the big wide world, and brand-makers of the Vineyard as a place that harbors the rich and famous and give-backers to the community. The billionaires who build bulgy houses come and go.
Race, Religion and Reason is the title for the forum on Wednesday, August 18, hosted and organized by seasonal resident and Harvard professor Charles Ogletree at the Performing Arts Center of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School in Oak Bluffs. The event is free and open to all.
Poet Judith Tannenbaum, the author of By Heart: Poetry, Prison and Two Lives, is presenting her work at Featherstone on Thursday, August 19 at 6:30 p.m.
On Wednesday, Sept. 1, Nanucket’s award-winning author Connor Gifford will be on the Vineyard to speak before the 300 teachers of the Martha’s Vineyard school system at the invitation of assistant superintendent Laurie Halt.
Mr. Gifford also will be at Edgartown Books on Wednesday from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. to sign his hit book, America According to Connor Gifford, with co-author Victora Harris.
Tom Dunlop will speak about his new book Schooner: Building a Wooden Boat on Martha’s Vineyard at the Chilmark Public Library on Wednesday, Sept. 8 at 5:30 p.m.
Cruising World, in its June 2010 issue wrote: “It was the most festive launch in more than a generation: the christening of Rebecca of Vineyard Haven, a 60-foot, 76,000-pound schooner designed and built, plank on frame, at the Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway, one of the leading traditional boatbuilding yards on the U.S. continent.
Who’s that doing his down dog at Walden Pond? Same cat rocking his proud warrior of civil disobediance. You guessed it: Henry David Thoreau, laid back dude and early champion of the simple life. According to Stefanie Syman in her new book The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America, Thoreau was also one of the first Americans to experiment with yoga on this soil.
West Tisbury author John Hough has received the the W.Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction for his Civil War novel Seen the Glory, published last year by Simon & Schuster. The award honors the best fiction set in a period when the United States was at war. It recognizes the service of American veterans and military personnel and encourages the writing and publishing of outstanding war-related fiction.
Island native Patty Howell has published World Class Marriage: How to Create the Relationship You Always Wanted with the Partner You Already Have, a book on marriage she cowrote with her husband, Ralph Jones. The book identifies 16 pillars essential for marital success, based on research as well as their more than 30 years as a married couple. Patty Howell is the daughter of E. Everett and Dorothy Howell of Vineyard Haven. Her father was a well-known photographer and her mother taught for many years at the Tisbury School.
