Twenty Summers

On Sunday, June 10, 2018 Overcoats joined us for an intimate concert. The New York-based female electronic-pop duo of Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell, performed in the historic Hofmann Studio in Provincetown, the former West End home and studio of artist Hans Hofmann, as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival. The talented best friends’ debut, Young, released in 2017, was praised as a “memorable album” in a rave review by critic Bob Boilen. In a vocal style that is minimalist yet rich in melody, they deliver songs of connection and tension, on the depths of love and the challenges of family.

Singer-songwriter Kevin Morby performed solo in the Hawthorne Barn in Provincetown, Mass. as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival. Morby rose to prominence as bassist in the band Woods; he also formed The Babies with Cassie Ramone of Vivian Girls. He describes his latest album, City Music, as "a mix-tape, a fever dream, a love letter dedicated to those cities that I cannot get rid of, to those cities that are all inside of me.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham and the internationally best-selling essayist, critic, and translator Daniel Mendelsohn discussed how writers turn consciously to literature itself as a way of broadening their own horizons on Sunday, May 27, 2018 in Provincetown’s Hawthorne Barn as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival. Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize), The Snow Queen, Specimen Days, and By Nightfall, as well as the nonfiction book Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown. His most recent book is A Wild Swan and Other Tales (illustrated by Yuko Shimizu). He is a senior lecturer at Yale and lives in New York. Daniel Mendelsohn is an internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator. His books include An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic (2017), shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize (U.K.) and named a Best Book of the Year by

We were delighted to host award-winning performer and author Alan Cumming interviewing the outrageously versatile Isaac Mizrahi, fashion legend turned actor–director–TV host on Saturday, May 19, 2018 in Provincetown’s Hawthorne Barn. Their conversation featured tales from the upbringing and prolific careers of both men, each a unique persona in his field, focusing on Mizrahi's second-act success in the entertainment industry. Some two decades after his autobiographical documentary Unzipped won him countless fans and a prize or two, Mizrahi has since hosted his eponymous TV show, is working on his third book, has directed two operas, and performs cabaret in venues as prestigious as Café Carlyle and Joe's Pub. Alan Cumming is a Tony Award–winning actor whose own highly versatile talents have landed him in films with everyone from Stanley Kubrick to the Spice Girls, onstage with Jay Z and Liza, as host of the Tony Awards, and even at the top of the New York Times Bestseller List for his memoir, Not My Father's S

On Saturday, May 19, 2018, performer and songwriter Martha Wainwright shared her distinctive voice and arsenal of powerful songs in the Hawthorne Barn in Provincetown, Mass. The solo performance featured her on an acoustic guitar, performing new and old material, including fan favorites "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole" and "Proserpina," and telling intimate stories along the way. Martha, who is the daughter of folk legends Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III, is currently finishing up a book titled Stories I Might Regret Telling You, which, like her songs, is a window into her life without artifice, pretension, or fakery. You can watch the full video of this event and more at https://www.20summers.org/videos.

Grammy and Tony award-winning singer-songwriter and Broadway composer Duncan Sheik joined us in the Hawthorne Barn as a resident artist during the week leading up to his performance. On the final night of his stay, he shared music from his compositions for Spring Awakening, American Psycho, and off his many albums (including his hit 'Barely Breathing'). Sheik shared the stage with special guest Micky Blue, who collaborated with him during his week-long residency in the Barn. This event took place on June 10, 2017.

Iconic poets Sharon Olds and Mark Doty read from their influential collections, and discuss the secrets behind their fearless craft. This event took place on June 10, 2017, and was moderated by Provincetown poet Kelle Groom.

Blending country, folk, and rock styles, vocalist Lucy Kaplansky performed in the Hawthorne Barn, sharing original songs as well as covers of June Carter Cash, Gram Parsons, Lennon-McCartney, and Nick Lowe. This event took place on June 3, 2017.

As the latest installment of our ongoing tribute to the painters who worked and taught in the Hawthorne Barn when it was an art school, Marcelle Polednik, a museum director and curator, and Karen Wilkin, experienced art critic and curator, discussed and presented images from Hans Hofmann: Works on Paper, an exhibit they curated for MOCA Jacksonville in Florida, demonstrating the ever-evolving work of Hofmann and the inspiration he drew from Provincetown itself. This event and video were made possible by generous support from the Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust.

Twenty Summers welcomed authors Alysia Abbott (Fairyland) and Joan Wickersham (The Suicide Index) to the Barn, who have both written critically acclaimed memoirs about the fathers they loved and lost too soon. The two authors discussed their memoirs, their writing lives, and their other work in this deeply personal and fascinating conversation. WCAI was a media sponsor for this event. This event took place on May 13, 2017.

World-renowned architects Peter Bohlin and William Rawn discussed the current and future role of architecture and their experiences designing buildings private and public, including a look into Bohlin's incredible collaboration with Steve Jobs to design the infamous Apple Stores around the world. This event took place on June 10, 2017.

Performer, producer, singer, composer, and classically trained violinist, Emily Wells joins us in the Barn with her varied use of classical and modern instrumentation as well as her deft approach to live sampling. She has evolved into a uniquely modern singer and composer who uses a variety of instruments, from strings and drums to synths and beat machines, to create what NPR has praised as'gospel-folk music that's immersed in secular desires and experiences' and the New York Times as 'quietly transfixing.'

In 2012, author and journalist David France released the documentary How to Survive a Plague, the culmination of his decades-long coverage of the U.S. AIDS crisis. It won a New York Film Critics Circle Award and was an Oscar nominee. Last fall he published his book of the same title. In reviewing it for the New York Times, provocative political commentator Andrew Sullivan called it 'the first and best history of the courage behind the fight to end AIDS' and a reminder that if gay life and culture flourish for a thousand years, people will still say, 'This was their finest hour.' In bringing them together, we experienced a bracing discourse on politics, culture, history, and more. Boston Pride co-presented this event.

Authors Junot Diaz and Jacqueline Woodson join us for a conversation in the Barn that delves into the divisive politics of our age and what it means to be an American fiction writer of color today. Junot Diaz, whose work has been honored with a Pulitzer and a MacArthur, joins Jacqueline Woodson, whose books for readers of all ages have won prizes including a National Book Award and a Coretta Scott King Award. From his Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to her Brown Girl Dreaming, from his activist work in the Dominican-American community to her stories for teenage readers about what it means to grow up black and gay, Diaz and Woodson are writers who know how to raise their voices when it counts. WCAI was a media sponsor for this event.

Classical string quartet Aurea Ensemble play their own tribute to Moby-Dick, Melville and the Great White Whale, which features Beethoven, Webern, sea shanties, and other nautically evocative music along with readings from the novel and from Melville's correspondence with Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom he dedicated his masterpiece.

Husband-and-wife duo David Wax and Suz Slezak, known as David Wax Museum, returned to the Barn for the second time to share their rousing Latin-folk-inspired indie rock. They performed a stripped down set of songs from their latest EP A La Rumba Rumba, a celebration of the Latin folk music that inspires them most, as well as tunes from their fourth full length album, Guesthouse.

Twenty Summers was proud to bring together the accomplished and widely admired Richard Russo and Hannah Tinti, each on tour for a new book: Russo for Trajectory, a quartet of novellas; Tinti for her second novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, praised in the Washington Post as 'master class in literary suspense.' In addition to writing ten other books, including the Pulitzer prize-winning novel Empire Falls and the best-selling memoir Elsewhere, Russo is a veteran screenwriter. His novel Nobody's Fool was made into a movie starring Paul Newman and Jessica Tandy. Tinti is also the author of an internationally acclaimed story collection, Animal Crackers, and The Good Thief, winner of the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. She is a cofounder and executive editor of the journal One Story and of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Italy. She was recently named one of the 100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture. Russo and Tinti, friends as well as kindred authors, discuss life, literature, and anyt

How did a disheveled, intellectually combative gay Jew with a thick accent become one of the most effective (and funniest) politicians of our time? Barney Frank grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey, where, at age fourteen, he made two vital discoveries about himself: he was attracted to government…and to men. He resolved to make a career out of the first attraction and to keep the second a secret. Now, fifty years later, his sexual orientation is widely accepted, while his belief in government is embattled. Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage is one man’s account of the country's transformation—and the tale of a truly momentous career.

Edith Windsor is one of the two plaintiffs whose joint victory before the Supreme Court led to last year's landmark decision in favor of marriage equality. In 2009, after the death of her spouse and longtime partner, Thea Speyer, Windsor learned that because her marriage was not recognized by the federal government, she was required to pay more than USD 300,000 in estate taxes. Windsor fought back, in United States v. Windso, all the way to the Supreme Court, striking down the Defense of Marriage Act and winning a national following as a beloved and charismatic leader for human rights. Together with Speyer, Windsor is the focus of the documentary film Edie and Thea: A Very Long Engagement. Her many honors and awards include the Women's Rights Award from the American Federation of Teachers and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Out magazine. Onstage with Windsor, we welcome back actor, writer, and activist James Lecesne, whose hit Off Broadway one-man show The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey we are prou

Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham (a Ptown regular) and the Canadian-American New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik (who's partial to Wellfleet) united onstage for the first time ever, to talk of matters newsworthy and intimate, factual and imaginary, lofty and lowbrow. Learning to drive, channeling Virginia Woolf, parenting in a foreign country, trespassing in the forbidden forest of the fairy tale. This event took place on May 24, 2015.