2025 Events
Tickets available here.
Friday, September 19th
6:00pm Rose Dorothea Award will be presented to The Provincetown Independent, represented by Teresa Parker, Publisher, and Edward Miller, Founder and Editor. The Rose Dorothea Award is given annually by the Provincetown Board of Library Trustees to a person with a strong connection to the Outer Cape who has made a significant contribution through the written word.
Saturday, September 20th
9:00 am: Reading Local - A reading by local writers, curated by Alejandro Varela, author of the forthcoming novel, Middle Spoon. He will choose 5 outstanding writers from the Cape Cod region to read from their work.
10:30am: Sense of Place: Cape Cod Writers - Cynthia Blakely, The Innermost House; Dennis Minsky, Peculiar and Superior; Judith Stiles, Hush Little Fire. Moderated by Ira Wood. These Cape Cod writers will read and discuss their disparate new books -- a memoir, essays, and a novel -- all very much informed by their setting on Cape Cod.
1:00pm: Colors, Places, History, Identity with Imani Perry, Black in Blues and Joseph Lee, Nothing More of This Land. Moderated by Cleyvis Natera. Both Aquinnah Wampanoag writer Joseph Lee and Black Harvard professor Imani Perry have written directly and indirectly about their own lives and their heritage as people of color. Here they talk about blending personal experience with history and reportage in their books.
2:30pm: Hombrecitos and Hot Girls - Queer Columbian writer Santiago Sanchez interviews dancer/producer/writer Benedict Nguyen (she, her) about her debut novel, Hot Girls with Balls, a hilarious satire of professional sports, men, trans-women, romance, and more! Come prepared to laugh.
4:00pm: Flashes of Life: Essays as Memoir with Edgar Gomez, Alligator Tears, and Mako Yoshikawa, Secrets of the Sun. Two authors of critically acclaimed non-fiction talk about writing essays – about mothers, fathers, family history, adult life – and how the sum of those moments and memories somehow turned into memoirs.
6:00pm: Teacher and Student: Learning From Each Other with Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, and Lucas Schaefer, The Slip. Much published novelist and essayist Alexander Chee is also a writing teacher, and debut novelist Lucas Schaefer was one of his students. Here they talk about what students learn from teachers, what teachers learn from students, and what writers learn from each other.
Sunday, September 21st
10:00am: Is the Past Present? Historical Fiction and Identity with Essie Chambers, novel, Swift River, Xochitl Gonzalez, Anita De Monte Laughs Last, and Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower. Moderated by Cleyvis Natera. From an 1895 Western, to a 1984 art history mystery, to several generations of Black women in the 20th century, three wonderful historical novelists talk about how the past informs the present.
11:30am: Magic, Dreams, and Identity in Fiction with Ruben Reyes, Archive of Unknown Universes, and Lisa Williamson Rosenberg, Mirror Me. Speculative…genre-bending…magical realist…. All of these terms apply to these two authors, who use these techniques to explore issues of cultural and psychological identity. But all you really need to know is these are fascinating novels and the authors have a lot to talk about!
2:30pm: Queer Creatures: Poets in Conversation with Elizabeth Bradfield, SOFAR, and Miller Oberman, Impossible Things. These two wonderful poets celebrate queerness and relationships in their poems; and in addition they are inspired by “the more-than-human world.” From her many voyages, Elizabeth Bradfield knows the ocean and its creatures well, whereas Miller Oberman uses natural images from his suburban childhood and urban life, full of grass, trees, birds, and other living things.
4:00pm: Activism Now: What Would Urvashi Do? with Amy Hoffman and Jyotsna Vaid, editors, The Dream of a Common Movement by Urvashi Vaid. The editors of Urvashi’s last book, along with other local and national activists, try to answer the question in the title, using Urvashi’s wisdom to give us direction in a seemingly impossible political climate. What can WE do to create change?