2025 Festival News
Five Cape Cod Writers to Read at the Opening of the Provincetown Book Festival on Saturday, September 20, at 9:00 a.m.
Provincetown, MA—The Provincetown Book Festival will kick off at 9:00 a.m., Saturday, September 20, with a curated reading by local and regional authors, chosen by author Alejandro Varela The selected writers are Mia Baumgarten, Corey Farrenkopf, Rita Mookerjee, Brett Shapiro, and Anca Vlasopolos. Their biographies appear below.
Alejandro Varela is the author of the new novel, Middle Spoon, as well as the novel The Town of Babylon, and a collection of short stories, The People Who Report More Stress. For this event, dubbed “Reading Local,” curator Varela reviewed 36 submissions from local and regional writers.
The selected writers will be reading fiction and non-fiction. Varela commented, “There was a lot of talent in the bunch, but these five didn't only rise to the top, I think they make for good live readings.”
Mia Baumgarten writes literary fantasy with small-town coastal New England settings and fabulist retellings of maritime folklore. She is the Media Program Coordinator for the Town of Orleans and has been a studio technician at ESPN, a stage manager at the Payomet Performing Arts Center, and a circulation assistant at the Wellfleet Public Library. Mia holds a BA in Writing for Film and Television from Emerson College and is currently earning her MFA in Popular Fiction from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine.
Corey Farrenkopf lives on Cape Cod and works as a librarian. His work has been published in Strange Horizons, Electric Literature, Catapult, The Deadlands, Flash Fiction Online, The Southwest Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of the novel, Living in Cemeteries, and the short story collection, Haunted Ecologies. To learn more, visit his website at CoreyFarrenkopf.com
Rita Mookerjee is an assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Worcester State University. She is the winner of the 2023 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award for Banana Heart and the author of False Offering (JackLeg Press). A co-founder of Honey Literary, she serves as vice president of the Board of Directors at Sundress Publications and a poetry editor at Split Lip Magazine. Her research has been funded by the Fulbright Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her poems can be found in American Poetry Review, CALYX, Copper Nickel, Poet Lore, and the Offing. In her free time, she dances burlesque and performs stand-up comedy.
Brett Shapiro is an American writer and the author of three novels: Henry’s Version (2024), Late in the Day (2022), and Those around Him (2019). He is also the author of two children’s books, one of which was the recipient of Austria’s National Book Award. His short stories have been performed in theatres throughout Italy, where he lived for 22 years. He is also a veteran writer for the United Nations and lives by the beach in Truro (MA) and Indialantic (FL).
Anca Vlasopolos published the short-story collection The Invisible Daughter and Other Alien Encounters; the award-winning novel The New Bedford Samurai; the award-winning memoir No Return Address: A Memoir of Displacement; six collections of poems: Late Pearlescence, Fires in the Dark, Often Fanged Light, Cartographies of Scale (and Wing), Walking Toward Solstice, and Penguins in a Warming World; three poetry chapbooks, a detective novel, Missing Members, and over three hundred poems and short stories in literary journals. She was nominated several times for the Pushcart Award in poetry and fiction. She has been featured on WCAI Sunday Poetry and has lectured at the Hyannis Public Library and the Centerville Historical Museum on Cape Cod, MA.
The 9:00 a.m. reading by these five writers will be followed by a program called “Sense of Place: Cape Cod Writers,” in which Cynthia Blakeley, Dennis Minsky, and Judith Stiles will discuss their new books, a memoir, essays, and a novel, respectively.
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Alexander Chee, Imani Perry, and Edgar Gomez to appear at the Provincetown Book Festival
Provincetown, MA —The 2025 Provincetown Book Festival, scheduled for September 19 – 21, features the prestigious author Alexander Chee, who will be reunited with a former student, novelist Lucas Schaefer, for a program entitled “Teacher and Student: How Writers Learn from Each Other,” on Saturday, September 21, at 6:00 p.m. The bestselling author of the historical novel Queen of the Night, Chee is perhaps even better known for his essay collection, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. Lucas Schaefer recently published The Slip, a critically acclaimed novel of transformation, identity, and boxing.
National Book Award winner and Harvard Professor Imani Perry will speak about her newest book, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People. She will be joined by Aquinnah Wampanoag writer Joseph Lee, author of Nothing More of This Land, about his life and travels among indigenous Americans. Aided by moderator Cleyvis Natera, they will discuss issues of identity, community, and their heritage as people of color.
Edgar Gomez, author of the highly acclaimed memoir High Risk Homosexual, will talk about his new book of essays, Alligator Tears, with Mako Yoshikawa, author of the acclaimed memoir-in-essays, Secrets of the Sun. They will talk about form, subject matter, humor, mothers, fathers, family history, and adult life in a program entitled “Flashes of Life: Essays as Memoir.”
The Provincetown Book Festival opens on Friday night, September 19, at 6:00 p.m., with the Rose Dorothea Award Reading and Reception at the Provincetown Library. The Rose Dorothea Award will be presented to the weekly newspaper The Provincetown Independent, represented by Teresa Parker, Publisher, and Edward Miller, Founder and Editor. The Rose Dorothea Award is given annually by the Board of Library Trustees to someone with a strong connection to the Outer Cape who has made a significant contribution through the written word.
The final session, taking place at 4:00 p.m. Sunday, September 21, is a tribute to the late LGBTQ+ activist and writer Urvashi Vaid, who lived in Provincetown. In a session entitled “What Would Urvashi Do?” editors Amy Hoffman and Jyotsna Vaid will read from Urvashi’s last book, The Dream of a Common Movement. The editors, along with a panel of local and national activists, will try to answer the question “What would Urvashi do?” using Urvashi’s wisdom to give us direction in a seemingly impossible political climate.
For more information about all of these programs, including appearances by Cape Cod writers Cynthia Blakeley, Dennis Minsky, and Judith Stiles; queer poets Elizabeth Bradley and Miller Oberman; and many wonderful novelists like Elizabeth Gonzalez James and Ruben Reyes, go to provincetownbookfestival.org. All programs are free and open to the public, but reservations are available online.
The Provincetown Book Festival is supported in part by the Friends of the Provincetown Library, the Massachusetts Center for the Book, the Massachusetts Cultural Council/Provincetown Cultural Council, and the Provincetown Tourism Fund.
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Local Writers to Kick Off Provincetown Book Festival - Call for Submissions to “READING LOCAL”
The 2025 Provincetown Book Festival will kick off at 10:00 a.m. Saturday, September 20, with a curated reading by local authors. This event, dubbed “Reading Local,” will be curated by acclaimed fiction writer Alejandro Varela. Varela is the author of a collection of short stories, The People Who Report More Stress, and two novels, The Town of Babylon, a finalist for the National Book Award, and the forthcoming Middle Spoon, to be published in September 2025 by Viking.
Alejandro Varela will review submissions from local Cape Cod and regional writers, and will select five writers to read at the opening program of the Provincetown Book Festival. The reading may include poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction.
Writers who are interested in submitting their work for “Reading Local,” should send a sample, no longer than three pages, with a brief introduction and bio, to Nan Cinnater at the Provincetown Library (ncinnater@clamsnet.org). Deadline for submissions is July 24. The list of readers will be announced on August 22.
This year the program, “Sense of Place: Cape Cod Writers,” takes place just after “Reading Local” on September 20 at 10:30 a.m. Featured Cape Cod writers are Cynthia Blakeley, Dennis Minsky and Judith Stiles. Wellfleet resident Judith Stiles, author of the novel Hush Little Fire, has become a legendary “Reading Local” success story.
As Judith tells it, “I like to … read my work in public, partly because I'm 90% deaf, but mostly to get an immediate response to my work in real time. [This includes] story slams, open mics, porch readings, and especially the wonderful READING LOCAL at the Provincetown Book Festival.” When Judith was chosen to read from her work at “Reading Local” in 2023, she fulfilled every writer’s dream. As she puts is, “You never know who will be in the audience. A literary agent heard my story at the Ptown Bookfest, and now I just published my first novel because of that listener.”
A weekend of free events for readers, writers, and book lovers of all kinds, the 2025 Provincetown Book Festival takes place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, September 19 -- 21. All events are held at the Provincetown Public Library. The Provincetown Book Festival is sponsored in part by the Friends of the Provincetown Library, the Provincetown Tourism Fund, the Massachusetts Center for the Book and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. For more information, go to provincetownbookfestival.org.