Fanny Howe of West Tisbury was honored last week with the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, awarded annually by the Poetry Foundation to a living American poet for lifetime accomplishments that warrant extraordinary recognition. The $100,000 that accompanies the award is one of the largest literary prizes in the nation.
The Oak Bluffs library welcomes Lou Berger, seasonal resident and former head writer for Sesame Street for 11 years, for a reading of his book, The Elephant Wish on Tuesday, August 11 from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.
The book is a modern fairy tale, in which Eliza Prattlebottom, on her eighth birthday, makes a wish: “Oh, I wish that an elephant would come and take me away!” Two days, six hours, thirty-seven minutes and nine seconds later, Eliza’s wish comes true.
Six years ago, West Tisbury resident Paul Karasik traveled to Oxford, Md., to meet the son of Fletcher Hanks, a great undiscovered comic book cartoonist who first caught his attention 20 years earlier when he printed portions of Mr. Hanks’s work as the associate editor of Raw magazine, the international comics and graphics review. Mr. Hanks had spent three years in this quiet fishing town on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay, during the advent of the comic book industry, from 1939 to 1941, scripting, drawing and inking 51 bizarre, edgy and masterful comic stories.
West Tisbury author Cynthia Riggs will talk about her latest book Death and Honesty, the eighth in her Martha’s Vineyard mystery series, at the Chilmark Public Library on Wednesday, May 20, at 5:30 p.m.
Feeling older? Wiser? Harvard professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot will discuss her new book, The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50 on Thursday, August 13, at 7:30 p.m. the Vineyard Haven Public Library. It is free and all are welcome.
Technothriller writer, essayist, postmodern literary fabulist and Island resident John Sundman will discuss his work and the meaning of literature in the age of the Internet at the Vineyard Haven library at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 15. The talk, entitled Cheap Complex Devices, is free and open to the public.
Thomas Dresser has a new book, entitled In My Life, published by Red Lead Press. The novel, his first work of fiction, is a coming-of-age story set in a small Massachusetts town with the backdrop of the 1960s.
To promote his new venture, a print-on-demand publication, Mr. Dresser will host a book signing on the porch at Slice of Life on Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs on Monday, May 18, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. He will speak at 4 p.m. Free coffee and cookies.
A regular summer Island impressario, Elizabeth Dembrowsky on Saturday debuts her first novel, My Monk, with two readings (1 and 6 p.m.) at the Katharine Cornell Theatre on Spring street in Vineyard Haven.
The book notes say: “Harriet Zabrosky believed in love at first sight — until it happened to her. He became a monk. She moved back to America.”
Author John Hough Jr. talks about his acclaimed new book, Seen the Glory, about two brothers from Martha’s Vineyard during the Civil War, at the Chilmark Public Library on Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 5:30 p.m.
