Lighthouse Santa

Lighthouse Santa

Sara Hoadland Hunter and Julia Miner, the writer and illustrator team behind The Lighthouse Santa will give a reading at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven on Thursday, Dec. 15, at 5 p.m.

Read More

As Mr. Collins Said, With a Modest Chuckle
Tatiana Schlossberg

The poem begins with the routine event of chopping parsley, a serious and yet absurd musing on a nursery rhyme known to all — three blind mice — and quickly spins into a quiet meditation on the sneaking cynicism that prevents us from feeling, and then, in shame, makes us feel all the more.

Read More

Sharks Meet Their Enemy and It Is Us
Peter Brannen

Every jittery Vineyard beachgoer is familiar with the iconic image of the restless great white patrolling the shallows, mouth agape, in search of a fleshy excuse to close it. Stacks of shark books celebrating the more lurid aspects of their behavior, particularly their extremely rare propensity to attack humans, already fill library shelves, but in Demon Fish, Washington Post environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin makes the case that the more fearsome animal is in the mirror.

Read More

Unlikely Friendship at Heart Of Panama Canal Journey

Author Chip Bishop’s great-great-uncle, Joseph Bucklin Bishop, was a newspaper editor during the time of Theodore Roosevelt. One of the stories he covered was the construction of the Panama Canal, the transoceanic canal that today seems a foregone conclusion but at the time was considered by many to be a fool’s errand.

Read More

Rwandan Statesman Travels Long Journey to Forgiveness

Joseph Sebarenzi, author of God Sleeps in Rwanda, is speaking at Howes House in West Tisbury on Saturday, August 6, at 5 p.m.

Mr. Sebarenzi’s book is a memoir of his life in Rwanda, including his service as President of the Rwandan Parliament, before and during the period of genocide experienced in Rwanda. Mr. Sebarenzi’s parents, three brothers, two sisters, and all their families were killed during this period.

Read More

Like Father, Like Daughter: Alexandra Styron Flexes Her Muscle in Memoir
Tatiana Schlossberg

“I really did spend my entire childhood watching television,” says Alexandra Styron, a claim that stands in stark contrast to her endlessly expansive vocabulary and carefully crafted storytelling.

Read More

Inky Nights: Mysterious Squid Are Subject of Study by Scientist
Peter Brannen

Before probing the outer reaches of our galaxy, alien hunters would be well-advised to turn their telescopes around, training them on Earth’s own cephalopods instead. The group of animals includes squid, octopus, cuttlefish and nautiluses and were seemingly jury-rigged by evolution, armed with suction cups, beaks, ink, jet propulsion, camouflage and an intelligence entirely unlike our own.

Read More

Cartoonist is Talk of the Island

Cartoonist Is Talk of the Island

Paul Karasik is many things and an exhibit focusing on the whole man would include, but not be limited to, the following: Cartoonist extraordinaire (published in The New Yorker), development director for the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School, professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, author, graphic novelist, sweat lodge devotee, the list goes on and on. He is also one of the nicest, most interesting people you will ever meet.

Read More

Boxing Shadows of a Violent Youth
Nina Tarnawsky

We often want to know more about our favorite authors. After investing hundreds of pages of time in their created worlds, we feel entitled to know more about what they’re like in our shared world. It’s the root of our fascination with Hemingway’s boxing and Faulkner’s drinking, with Greene’s Catholicism and Salinger’s reclusiveness. We want to know more, but rarely do we get our wish. However, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who shares more than Andre Dubus 3rd.

Read More

Watching the Detective, New Book Reveals Fictional Sleuth’s Island
Holly Nadler

Cynthia Riggs, daughter of Dionis Coffin Riggs, has immortalized her mother as the 92-year-old sleuth Victoria Trumbull of a popular Island mystery series. Riggs, the younger, has penned ten of these novels so far, the title of each one inspired by the name of a poisonous, or at least sinister, flower, such as Deadly Nightshade and The Paperwhite Narcissus.

Read More

Pages