Vineyard creative writing conference goes virtual
The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing’s summer conference will be virtual again this summer, giving it a degree of outreach that is already generating global attention to what may be one of the...
Finding Lucy Stone
Since reading an advance copy of Katherine Sherbrooke’s “Leaving Coy’s Hill,” I haven’t stopped talking about about the abolitionist, suffragist, and orator Lucy Stone. I hadn’t heard of Lucy Stone before reading the book....
King Lear and you
Dear Internet,
Thank you for reminding us that Shakespeare wrote “King Lear” during the plague of 1606. It’s helpful to think about Shakespeare when we sit down at our computers. He was a model for...
Secret lives of secret sellers
While working for the CIA as a mid-level agent, Aldrich Ames once left a briefcase with confidential material in it on a New York City subway. A misstep like this, one might think, would...
Gifts for the bibliophile in your life
The holiday shopping season quickly accelerates into high gear, and with Black Friday and Cyber Monday fast fading in the rearview mirror, we suggest it’s time to refocus your attention, if you have any...
When a giraffe is born without spots
Imagine a giraffe born spotless. Kate Hancock and illustrator Lane Gregory do just that in their new collaboration for young readers, “Spotless” (Stanza Lone Books). Readers first meet the strikingly cute and spotless giraffe...
Writing advice from the pros
If you weren’t among the 600 to 700 people on Monday who trooped to the sixth annual Islanders Write conference at Featherstone Center for the Arts in Oak Bluffs, here's a short list of...
Fans fill Featherstone for Horwitz, McCullough
If you showed up at 6:30 Sunday night you were late. The line of people to hear David McCullough and Nathaniel Horwitz speak at 7:30 snaked two-abreast down the 100-foot walkway from the Featherstone...
Sex, spiders, and symphonies, oh my!
Every year leading up to Islanders Write, we ask four questions to the writers taking part. We actually have a lot more questions for them, but we’ll save those for the event. Three of...
Coolest Islanders Write ever
The annually delightful Islanders Write (IW) conference occurs August 11 and 12 at a new venue. The sixth edition of IW features new themes supporting traditional fan faves for active and aspiring writers. A...
Rejoice, grammar geeks
Grammar nerds are in for a real treat at this year's Islanders Write. New Yorker Ellen Jovin will set up her “Grammar Table” at the event at Featherstone Center for the Arts on Monday,...
Honing your craft
Islanders Write is expanding the number of writing workshops offered at the day-long event scheduled for Monday, August 12, at Featherstone Center for the Arts, beginning with an 8 am Wake up and Write!...
Writers reading
“I am always stunned at the caliber of writing on the Island,” said West Tisbury’s Niki Patton. Since 2015, Patton, a writer herself, has been facilitating Writers Read, a monthly informal feedback group open...
The perfect pitch
A few weeks before my first picture book was published, I was meeting with my editor at Simon & Schuster to talk about my second book when she asked, “Do you want to see...
A writer on writing
For the past two summers, novelist LaShonda Katrice Barnett has offered a series of 30-minute one-on-one feedback sessions at Islanders Write, The MV Times’ sponsored writers festival, to writers who have finished a draft...
Islanders Write is moving
Islanders Write, The MV Times’ annual writers’ festival, will move to Featherstone Center for the Arts in 2019. “After five wonderful years at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury, we realize that we need...
Schedule of Philip Weinstein’s fall lecture series on Marcel Proust
This fall, literatus Philip Weinstein will hold another series of free public lectures at the Katharine Cornell Theater in Vineyard Haven as part of “Islanders Read the Classics,” this time on legendary French writer...
Taking a look at the writing life
Five years now into the Islanders Write (IW) annual event, it is enormously satisfying to observe one overriding constant: the purity of intent among the hundreds of writing pros and neophytes who have trooped...
Pitch Panel returns to ‘Islanders Write’
Marci Moreau practiced her pitch on State Beach until her family started throwing sand at her. Moreau was one of six people selected to pitch their book projects at “Islanders Write” last summer, which...