FREE
MA Writers Panel
How does place inform fiction? In this authors in conversation event, Emily Cavanagh, Nancy Star and Mathea Morais, all residents of the island of Martha’s Vineyard, will discuss how the places we call home can shape our writing. The discussion will include Q and A and a writing prompt.
Emily Cavanagh is the author of Her Guilty Secret, Everybody Lies, This Bright Beauty, and The Bloom Girls. She lives with her family on the island of Martha's Vineyard where she works as a high school English teacher. Read more about Emily’s work and life atwww.emilycavanaghauthor.com.
Mathea Morais’s debut novel THERE YOU ARE (Chicago Review Press, October 2019) was called “a novel that effectively intertwines ruminations on race, music, romance, and history,” by Kirkus Review (starred review). It was also named one of Ms. Magazine's "October 2019 Reads for the Rest of Us” and Electric Literature's "The 20 Best Debuts of The Second Half of 2019”. She is the Director of Literary Arts at Featherstone (formerly Noepe Center for Literary Arts) that has hosted workshops and readings with authors such as Billy Collins, Hanif Abdurraqib, K-Ming Chang, Jorie Graham, Shira Erlichman, Hala Alyan, and more. She has a degree in literature from NYU and her writing has appeared in Necessary Fiction, Red Bull Music Academy, Trace Urban Magazine, The New Engagement, Slush Pile Magazine, and others. Morais lives on Martha’s Vineyard where she teaches English and creative writing to young people.
Best-selling author Nancy Star’s sixth novel, Rules For Moving, was published by Lake Union during the first May of Covid (2020) when book warehouses were closed, so maybe that’s why you’ve never heard of it! Her previous novel, Sisters One, Two, Three landed on Publishers Weekly’s list of Top Ten Bestsellers of 2016. Nancy’s essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Lithub, and The Forward, among other places. Before turning to writing fiction full time, Nancy worked as a movie executive at the Samuel Goldwyn Company, dividing her time between New York and London. She now lives in Chilmark, Massachusetts and Manhattan.