The following was presented as part of last year's Salem Lit Fest. A full schedule of programming for this year's festival to be held Sept. 17-19 is available here. I have always been a doubter and a believer at the same time. Belief is a very subtle, quiet nutrient, whereas doubt is ... more »
Diane DiPrima, Poet Laureate of San Francisco, will be the featured reader at Olson 100, Gloucester's celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles Olson, the local poet whose reputation was international. Sponsored by the Charles Olson Society, the Cape Ann Museum and local ... more »
Poetry lovers and those who would like to learn more about the life and work of the internationally acclaimed Gloucester poet Charles Olson are invited to join a free study group at the Bookstore in Gloucester's West End, beginning on Thursday, September 9. Sponsored by the Charles Olson ... more »
It's Monday night and you enter the STC Theater on Lafayette Street, across from the Wendy's and a few steps away from Strega's. You take two steps through the lobby and push back the curtain to enter the big room. On the other side is a dark room, a stage, and a crowd of friends ready to ... more »
Any one who takes young children to a beach witnesses their curiosity as they explore every little stone and shell. After all, it's right under their gaze. No one has to tell them what to do. Henry Ferinni and Stephan Mallette's children's book about the poet Charles Olson's early years in ... more »
This past Thursday I sat at the Salem Farmers' Market community table representing Cornerstone Books and had the opportunity to participate in a marketplace that gives me hope for humanity's future - if not America's economic supremacy. Gathered in Derby Square were hordes interested in ... more »
Atticus Finch, Boo Radley, Scout - a few names permanently ingrained in the minds of many of us who read To Kill a Mockingbird freshman year of high school. One of the most cherished and well known loss-of-innocence novels, Harper Lee's classic is undeniably one of America's favorites. The ... more »
The following is a press release from the Gloucester Writers' Center A group of local citizens has announced plans to purchase the residence of Gloucester's poet laureate Vincent Ferrini and use it as a base for the Gloucester Writers' Center. The small house at 126 East Main St. was built ... more »
Two hundred pages and thousands of miles into Jay Atkinson's lovingly detailed journey through Kerouac's on-the-road America comes an observation that feels like the heart of this heart-felt book, Paradise Road. About to hit the road again to meet up with Surfer, one of Atkinson's ... more »
It wasn't so long ago that books addressing issues of LGBTQ interest were relegated to specialty stores or obscure bottom shelves. Today, though, general interest bookstores like Cornerstone Books in Salem are happy to host folks like Philip Gambone who will read from his latest book Travels ... more »
The Salem Literary Festival announces the addition of a national writing contest, offering a $200 prize for the winning work of short fiction on a theme of New England History. The panel of judges will include bestselling authors Brunonia Barry and Katherine Howe. The winning author will be ... more »
Whether our fathers taught us not to curse or how to curse, James Sullivan's new critical biography of George Carlin, Seven Dirty Words: The Life and Crimes of George Carlin, has much to add to our understanding of raw language: as art, as politics, as funny. Carlin's most famous ... more »
These weeks are not about food. At least, they weren't supposed to be. They are instead about sitting with my writing. I will pause, at this writer's colony in the Ozarks, for quick handfuls of nuts or some yogurt or perhaps a glass of wine. No serious preparation necessary. At least, this ... more »
I often brag to disbelieving Midwestern guests, that despite its witch-hunting roots, Salem is a superlatively diverse and open-minded community. Its puritanism evident only in a deep-seated provincialism and a hard-nosed disdain for Yankee fans. In the minds of many, Salem is to New ... more »
Tickets sold in rock concert speed to see Greg Mortenson receive Salem's own version of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Salem Award for Human Rights and Social Justice. The award will be given tomorrow night at Salem High School. The award is given each year to keep alive the lessons of the ... more »
As a young, red-headed writer, Rae Francoeur ran a bookstore in Derry, New Hampshire when The Joy of Sex was first published in 1972. Fully illustrated with long-haired hippies, the "gourmet guide to lovemaking" put on the table what Americans had reserved for the bedroom. Now, at age ... more »
When Brunonia Barry's The Lace Reader raced to the top of the New York Times bestseller's list in 2008, book clubs across the country got to see there's more to Salem than witches. Two years later, Barry's doing it again with her highly anticipated second novel, The Map of True ... more »
Author Jenny White has spent much of her adult life taking in other people's stories of their trips to Turkey. She generously listened as this writer shared memories from her backpacking 20s when Istanbul and small Turkish fishing villages topped the list. This is because White, an ... more »
On a recent cold and rainy April Saturday afternoon, an intimate group of Salem's committed literary community gathered around Cornerstone Books' fireplace to hear Ipswich author Doug Stewart talk about The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare. In 1795, young William-Henry Ireland became the talk ... more »
You don't have to be a card carrying member of the literati to realize the depth of the North Shore's literary heritage. First there was Hawthorne, then Updike; now, with her first Edgar nomination, Beverly resident Dana Cameron can add her name to that list of North Shore writers who ... more »
So, there I was. Practically alone in a room with Stephen King's son. We booksellers at Salem's Cornerstone Books had made Joe Hill comfortable. We gave him a cup of tea and stacks of clean hardcover editions of his latest highly acclaimed book "Horns" to sign, as well as purchased books ... more »
I adore music and I'm obsessed with poetry. Blending these two artistic genres, while keeping intact the integrity of each, is a feat accomplished wonderfully by the duo Confluence. On Wednesday, Feb. 24th they'll debut their album "Ogunquit" at the Salem Athenaeum at 7:30 p.m. I ... more »
This story appeared on Art Throb on Aug. 4, 2009. Through a series of circumstances, I was recently compelled once again to read The Catcher in the Rye -- which, 58 years after its publication, continues to sell around 250,000 copies a year. But this time, in addition to alternately ... more »
Check your fluffy bears and cupids at the door in Newburyport this weekend. The Tannery Reading Series' solution for Valentine's weekend is a literary evening for anyone interested in a smart, fun, unusual way to spend the holiday that goes where Hallmark has never gone before. Catch ... more »
It seems to always surprise us that landscapes can be highly evocative -- purple mountain majesties and all the rest -- especially when the landscape in question is our own backyard. Thankfully for us North Shoremen, Elyssa East has woven together in Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a ... more »
Sixty2 on Wharf is a hip Salem hangout, with a casual ambiance and a community vibe. And despite your preconceived notions, the same goes for the Salem Athenaeum. The Athenaeum, which hosted its Bicentennial Kickoff Cocktail Party at Sixty2 this past week, is a cultural icon in Salem. ... more »
If you haven’t already read the first part of this opus, then you’ll probably want to do so before tackling this final part, not least because Part One will answer the obvious questions raised by much of the following, such as “Who is this guy and why’s he writing for Art Throb when ... more »
When my sister, Art Throb founder Dinah Cardin, asked me to write a piece about H.P. Lovecraft for the site, I let the invitation sink down into my subconscious to percolate for awhile, as is my usual artistic wont. But to my chagrin, the creative coffee failed to brew for quite some ... more »
Salem State will play a key role in the second annual Massachusetts Poetry Festival. The festival, which runs from Thursday, October 15th to Sunday, October 18th, features such notables as former poet Laureate Robert Pinsky and Louise Gluck. It has kickoff events around the state on ... more »
Some authors write engagingly about a single subject, secret codes say. Others--and these include our most versatile--seem to be able to handle anything with power and panache. Gloucester resident Lucy Honig, recipient of the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize for her 1999 collection ... more »
When shop-owner Marie Cardillo first stepped into the sunlit space at 105 Essex Street about five years ago, she knew it would be perfect for her new shop. When she learned the building was at one time home to Sophia Peabody, Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife, it only clinched the deal. ... more »
Matilda jumps silently up on the window sill, her face a stone mask of indifference, her tail instantly wrapping about her as she lands. Today is my cat's birthday. It's also Independence Day, the Fourth of July. It's a nice, clear day, and I stare out at the vast ... more »
I had an incident a couple of weeks ago where I read a passage from my novel-in-progress to a writer's group and received some very helpful critical feedback. This spawned a new topic for a reflection on the writing process- inspiration. I read the following passage to the group: "Pianosong ... more »
Salem needed "Deliverance Dane." Everything the world understands about the Salem Witch Hysteria it learned not in the 1690s, but in the 1950s, from Arthur Miller. His play The Crucible was of course a thinly-veiled allegory of the House Unamerican Activities business, to which Miller ... more »
The novelist Jonathan Bayliss, despite writing three thousand pages of fiction, was best-known in his lifetime for his widely distributed and reprinted article on computing and efficiency, called "Expanding the Uses of the Bill of Materials Processor." There were three sides to Jonathan ... more »
"H" is how I'll call myself. Am I proud to have been published in an anthology of erotica called "The Garden of the Perverse"? Sure! And why not? Still, when I was accepted into the anthology (for the measly reward of $50 plus a copy; erotica pays like poetry), I told one person; my ... more »
One of our aims at the Thursday Theatre is to create dialogue about the creative process. Our event usually begins with an introduction, written by me and my co-host, Jennifer Jean, who will pick a poem and describe her take on the topic at hand. One of our recent topics was on ... more »
When musician Willie Alexander, who's been called the godfather of Boston punk, was growing up on Washington Square in Gloucester, his father preached the gospel in the heart of the city, in a sumptuous Gothic-styled Baptist church that no longer stands, a place and time that lingers now only in ... more »
On Sunday June 28th at 1pm at Cornerstone Books in Salem, The Parlor, a Salem based non-profit creative writing center, will be presenting its second annual Creative Connection event. Executive Director of The Parlor, Adam Pieroni, notes, "The idea behind Creative Connections is to connect ... more »
The nationally televised showing on PBS in April and May of Henry Ferrini’s award-winning documentary on Charles Olson, Polis is This, has sparked a renewed interest in the life and work of the late Gloucester poet. Just in time for those who would like to know more about Olson’s ... more »