On Thursday, July 19, at 7:30 p.m. the 2012 author lecture series begins. This year’s summer lineup includes Pulitzer Prize winners Richard Russo and Jennifer Egan, also Peter Beinart and Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The series is designed to celebrate and support the authors and independent bookstores. The price of admission is free if you buy the author’s book. If you choose not to buy a book, the cost is $10.

It was a Chilmark showdown Sunday night: on one side was the noted civil liberties lawyer, law professor and author Alan Dershowitz. On the other was author Peter Beinart, an associate professor of journalism and an editor at the Daily Beast.

The debate centered on Mr. Beinart’s recent book, The Crisis of Zionism, and differing views about the future of Israel. A large crowd at the Chilmark Community Center watched the two spar, sometimes heatedly, in a debate moderated by author Richard North Patterson.

As a little girl, Charlayne Hunter-Gault would sit on her grandmother’s knee while she read the news, picking out the comics, finding one in particular rather enchanting.

“I fell in love with Brenda Starr,” she said. “I thought, here’s the most exciting job for a woman — taking on the world as she reported for the newspaper. It never occurred to me that this was a white woman with red hair and blue eyes.”

Visionary academic Dr. Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, needed a visionary architect to design the campus.

In a 1967 Life magazine story, the late William Stryon was quoted as saying: “Writing is a cruel and wracking pursuit. I hope none of my children follow in my path.”

Alexandra Styron has done just that, and in her book — Reading My Father — she has found a lifeline away from the scar tissue of her upbringing to a deep and compelling portrait of a complex person — father and writer.

State Road Restaurant’s Speakeasy Series returns next week with more unrivaled chances to mingle and speak with respected authors. This Tuesday, April 18, author John Hough Jr. will discuss Seen the Glory, a novel about the Battle of Gettysburg and two young brothers who volunteer to serve their country. Future participating authors include Alexandra Styron, who will speak about her book, Reading My Father, on May 16. On June 20 novelist Richard North Patterson will discuss his 20th novel, Fall from Grace, a family drama set on Martha’s Vineyard.

“April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

So said T.S. Elliot at the beginning of his epic poem The Waste Land.

Here on the Vineyard, though, April is poetry month, nothing cruel about that, and to celebrate, the West Tisbury Library’s is holding its annual community poetry night on Sunday, April 22 from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.

Today is the deadline for Island students, grades one through eight, to enter the Mom of the Year essay writing contest. The contest, in conjunction with the Edgartown Board of Trade and Pink and Green Weekend, will award three winning prizes—one each in grades one to three, four to six and seven to eight. The winning essays will be recognized and read at the Harbor View Hotel’s Mother’s Day brunch on Sunday, May 13, at 11 a.m.

Alexandra Styron, the daughter of William Styron, will be featured at the next Speakeasy series held at State Road Restaurant in West Tisbury on Wednesday, May 16 at 5:30 p.m.

Ms. Styron’s recent book is Reading My Father, a memoir about growing up with the legendary author of Sophie’s Choice, The Confessions of Nat Turner and Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.

The New York Times called Ms. Styron’s book, “Ardent, sophisticated and entirely winning.”

In 1995, Sarah Ban Breathnach wrote a bestselling book called Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. The book features 366 essays about how to live life with simplicity and grace, but most of all gratitude. Oprah Winfrey called it her “favorite book,” of the year.

The book sold seven million copies and counting.