2012

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.

“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.

John Hough Jr.

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.

Kate Feiffer

By SYDNEY BENDER

Children’s books are magical. Just ask Island author Kate Feiffer, who debuts her latest children’s book, Signed by Zelda, on Thursday, April 5, at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in downtown Vineyard Haven.

Her last book, No Go Sleep, arrived in book stores just last month.

Herbal Tea Talk

Some think green beer for St. Patrick’s day. Others go for a spot of tea.

If you’re in the latter camp, head to the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore on Main street in Vineyard Haven to sip tea with Island herbalist Holly Bellebuono, who will be discussing her new book The Essential Herbal for Natural Health: How to Transform Easy-To-Find Herbs Into Healing Remedies for the Whole Family.

Afterwards, perhaps you can use the herbs to help an ailing St. Patrick’s Day reveler.

Fall from Grace, by Richard North Patterson, Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, NY, March 2012, 278 pages (hardcover, $26.00).

Chilmark is home base in Richard North Patterson’s newest novel, Fall from Grace. “I’ve long wanted to write a novel set on Martha’s Vineyard, my summer home for almost two decades now,” Mr. North Patterson writes in the book’s afterword.

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