Devin N. Morris and Jenna Wortham in Conversation

May 21, 2022 at the Hawthorne Barn, Provincetown, MA

Devin N. Morris is a Baltimore born, Brooklyn based artist who is interested in abstracting American life and subverting traditional value systems through the exploration of racial and sexual identity in mixed media paintings, photographs, writings and video. His works prioritize displays of personal innocence and acts of kindness within surreal landscapes and elaborate draped environments that reimagine the social boundaries imposed on male interactions, platonic and otherwise. The use of gestural kindnesses between real and imagined characters are inspired by his various experiences growing as a black boy in Baltimore, MD and his later experiences navigating the world as a black queer man. Memory subconsciously roots itself in the use of familiar household materials & fabrics, while symbolically he arranges it. Looking to buoy his new realities in a permanent real space, Morris posits his reimagined societies as a prehistory to futures that are impossible to imagine.

Jenna Wortham is continuing a residency from 2020 that was interrupted by the pandemic. She is a sound healer, reiki practitioner, herbalist, and community care worker oriented towards healing justice and liberation; Jenna is also a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, co-host of the podcast Still Processing, and will be working on a book about the body and dissociation.

Twenty Summers 2022

Josh Prager / Co-Founder

Aziz Isham / Executive Director

Susan Meiselas / Photographer

Jeremy O. Harris / Playwright

Jeffrey Yasuo Mansfield / Architect

Brenda Zhang (Bz) / Artist & Designer

Adrián Fernández / Artist & Photographer

Fran Lebowitz / Author

V (Eve Ensler) / Playwright & Activist

Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil / Linguist

Raymond Antrobus / Poet

Cynthia Nixon, V Eve Ensler & Kara Swisher in Conversation

Cynthia Nixon is an actress, activist and theatre director best known for her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series Sex and the City. In 2018 she ran for Governor of New York on a platform focused on income inequality, renewable energy, establishing universal health care, stopping mass incarceration in the United States, and protecting undocumented children from deportation. Nixon is also an advocate for LGBT rights and received the Yale University Artist for Equality award in 2013 and a Visibility Award from the Human Rights Campaign in 2018.

V (formerly Eve Ensler) is a Tony Award-winning playwright, activist, performer, and author of the Obie award-winning international theatrical phenomenon The Vagina Monologues, published in over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries, and was recently heralded by The New York Times as one of the most important plays of the past 25 years. She is the author of many plays and books including her critically acclaimed memoir, In the Body of the World, best-seller The Apology, now available in almost 20 languages, and soon to be released Reckoning by Bloomsbury in 2023. She is the founder of V-Day, the almost 25 year old global activist movement to end violence against all women (cisgender and transgender), gender diverse people, girls and the planet—and founder of One Billion Rising, the largest global mass action to end gender-based violence in over 200 countries, as well as a co-founder of City of Joy.

Kara Swisher is an American journalist. She is an opinion writer for The New York Times, a contributing editor at New York, the host of the podcast Sway, and the co-host of the podcast Pivot.

Roe v. Wade: Joshua Prager & Dr. Felicia Kornbluh

As the Supreme Court was pondering whether to overturn Roe v. Wade early June 2022, journalist Joshua Prager discussed his recent book The Family Roe with activist and feminist scholar Dr. Felicia Kornbluh. Their conversation explores the history of abortion, the unknown lives at the heart of Roe, and the current state of reproductive rights in America.

Dr. Felicia Kornbluh is a writer, activist, and professor who specializes in the histories of feminism, gender, social welfare, and reproductive politics. She is Professor of History and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Vermont and the author or coauthor of three books, including the forthcoming A WOMAN’S LIFE IS A HUMAN LIFE: My Mother, Our Neighbor, and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice.

For more than twenty years, Joshua Prager, a former senior writer for The Wall Street Journal, has written about historical secrets—revealing all from the hidden scheme that led to baseball’s most famous moment (Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard Round the World”) to the only-ever anonymous recipient of a Pulitzer Prize (a photographer he tracked down in Iran). He is also the author of The Echoing Green (a Washington Post Best Book of the Year) and 100 Years, a collaboration with Milton Glaser, the graphic designer who created the I ❤️ NY logo. Joshua has written for the Atlantic, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He was a Nieman fellow at Harvard and a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at Hebrew University, and has spoken at venues including TED and Google. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two daughters.

Secret City: James Kirchick and Andrew Sullivan in Conversation

Washington, D.C. has always been a city of secrets. Few have been more dramatic than the ones revealed in James Kirchick’s Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. James Kirchick is joined by fellow writer Andrew Sullivan to explore how the secret “too loathsome to mention”, since FDR has shaped each successive presidential administration, impacting everything from the creation of America’s earliest civilian intelligence agency to the rise and fall of McCarthyism, the struggle for African American civil rights, and the conservative movement.

“Scrupulously researched and novelistic in style, Secret City is an extraordinary achievement... Not since Robert Caro’s Years of Lyndon Johnson have I been so riveted by a work of history. Secret City is not gay history. It is American history.”

—George Stephanopoulos

James Kirchick is an award-winning journalist and author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age. A visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, he has reported from over 40 countries and is a columnist for Tablet magazine. Kirchick has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the New York Review of Books, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung among many other publications, and lives in Washington, D.C.

Andrew Sullivan is one of today’s most provocative social and political commentators. A former editor of The New Republic, he was the founding editor of The Daily Dish, and has been a regular writer for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Time, Newsweek, New York magazine, The Sunday Times (London), and now The Weekly Dish. He lives in Washington, DC, and Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Home and Elsewhere: Co-Creating an Atlas with Brenda Zhang (Bz)

Through a series of exercises, Twenty Summers Fellow Brenda Zhang (Bz) guides participants in visual and spatial documentation of their individual experiences and narratives of Place, while exploring the shared meanings of “home” and “elsewhere.” Participants are invited to bring cartographic tools from their own traditions, diasporas, or fictions.

Brenda Zhang (Bz) is a visual artist, designer, organizer, and educator based on unceded Tongva land (so-called Los Angeles). They are a core organizer with the Design As Protest Collective and Dark Matter University and a founding member of SPACE INDUSTRIES. In their practice, they investigate physical and cultural construction as entangled processes and use disciplinary tools of art and architecture to imagine futures beyond settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy. Bz received a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Visual Arts from Brown University. In their free time, they look for birds and trash in the Los Angeles River.

Indigenous Futures: A Conversation with Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil

May 14, 2022 at the Hawthorne Barn, Provincetown, MA

Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil (Ayutla Mixe, 1981) is a member of COLMIX, a collective of young Mixe people who carry out research and dissemination activities on Mixe language, history and culture. She studied Hispanic Language and Literature and completed a Master's degree in Linguistics at UNAM. She has collaborated in various projects on the dissemination of linguistic diversity, development of grammatical content for educational materials in indigenous languages, and documentation projects and attention to languages at risk of disappearing. She has been involved in the development of written material in Mixe and in the creation of Mixe-speaking readers and other indigenous languages. She has been involved in activism for the defense of the linguistic rights of indigenous language speakers, in the use of indigenous languages in the virtual world and in literary translation. She has also been involved in processes in defense of the environment.

Fran Lebowitz in Conversation with Brian Vines

Fran Lebowitz in Conversation with Brian Vines at the historic Hawthorne Barn in Provincetown, Massachusetts, June 12, 2021.

Twenty Summers Concerts at Truro Vineyards 2021 Highlights

Luna

Twenty Summers presents Luna LIVE at Truro Vineyards of Cape Cod, Truro, MA, July 30, 2021

Video: Michael Pineda Cestaro

Luna was a New York band formed in 1991 by singer/guitarist Dean Wareham after the breakup of Galaxie 500. The band made seven studio albums before disbanding in 2005. After a ten-year break, they reunited and toured in 2015, and in 2017 released a new LP — A Sentimental Education and an EP of instrumentals — A Place of Greater Safety.

Other recent reissues include a deluxe 2xLP version of their classic Penthouse album (on Rhino) and another 2xLP set Lunafied that collects all the covers the band recorded in the 1990s.

Now scattered around the country (Los Angeles, New York and Austin) the band retains the same lineup that operated from 1999 to 2005: Dean Wareham on vocals/guitar, his wife Britta Phillips on bass, Sean Eden on guitar, and Lee Wall on drums.

"At their best, it’s hard to believe there is any other kind of music besides this simple, graceful, chiming chug" — the Guardian

"Dean Wareham has an unlikely quiver of a voice that, for whatever ungodly reason, sounds as if he’s survived something his music alludes to but never gives away" — Jerry Stahl

"One of indie rocks’ most beloved live acts" — Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone

Bosq

Twenty Summers presents Bosq (featuring Steve Egoavil) LIVE at Truro Vineyards of Cape Cod, Truro, MA, August 28, 2021

Percussionist: Steve Egoavil

Video: Michael Pineda Cestaro

Bosq, Producer, DJ & Multi-instrumentalist, has been exploring the intersections of Afro-Latin music with Disco, Funk, Reggae, House and Hip Hop for years. Since 2013 and the release of his first album, his musicianship and craft have matured without losing any of the passion or imagination with which he approaches every project. His pursuit for collaborating authentically rather than simply appropriating musical styles from afar brought him first to Puerto Rico, where over a two week stay he recorded the entire Bosq y La Candela All-Stars - San Jose 51 in Old San Juan with legendary musicians like Tempo Alomar and Roberto Roena. Now, with 5 full original albums and countless remixes and singles under his belt (for labels as diverse and legendary as Ubiquity, Fania, Defected, Soul Clap and more), he creates and resides full time in Medellín, Colombia, one of the worlds most legendary musical melting pots.

Bosq’s music has seen consistent play from the likes of Gilles Peterson & Craig Charles on the BBC, KCRW, RinseFM & other legendary radio stations, while Dj’s like Kerri Chandler, Poolside, Yuksek, Palms Trax, Soul Clap, & GUTS give his tunes constant rotation in clubs and at festivals. Tours have taken Bosq across North & South America, Europe, and Asia, to clubs and festivals like Rakastella (Miami), OYA (Oslo), Boomtown Fair (UK) and many more. He has shared stages with the likes of Joe Claussel, Bobbito, J Rocc & Tony Touch to name a few. His music has been featured in films and television such as The Catch, You’re The Worst, Broad City, and more.

follow @bosqmusic on IG | facebook | twitter | soundcloud | spotify

Mal Blum

Mal Blum, once dubbed “punk’s greatest hidden treasure” by Stereogum, cleverly crafted songs that are are as self-effacing as they are viscerally relatable. In 2019 they released their latest full length, Pity Boy (Don Giovanni), an album that explores boundary setting and self-sabotage, and an exemplification of Mal's ability to interrogate the human condition with lyrical ingenuity. Following that, they released a 7", Nobody Waits b/w San Cristóbal, with Saddle Creek Records' Document Series in 2020.

Mozelle & Mike Flanagan

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2

Twenty Summers presents Mozelle & Mike Flanagan (featuring Cliff Lechy) LIVE at Truro Vineyards of Cape Cod, Truro, MA, July 16, 2021

Video: Michael Pineda Cestaro www.upabovecreative.com

—

Mozelle Andrulot grew up in Eastham and attended Lesley University where she studied Liberal Arts. Her career has taken her to New York City and London where she performed at the SoHo House in both cities.

Here on the Cape, she’s performed at Mahony’s, Tin Pan Alley, The Muse and regularly with Zoë Lewis’s Bootleggers show in Provincetown. She has graced the stage with local notable jazz artists Bruce Abbot, Fred Fried, Fred Boyle and John Thomas. This local jazz jewel, along with Doug Ricardi’s Jazz till Dawn, entertains  audiences from Wellfleet’s Preservation Hall to the Yarmouth Cultural Center. This summer she will be singing outdoors regularly at the Fox and Crow.

MikeMRF is a performing artist, recording artist, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter. His latest album Mob Music 2 hit #39 on the iTunes R&B Albums Chart and was featured on Apple Music. Album opener, "Tip Jar" landed in the Semi-Finals of the 2020 International Songwriting Competition and was featured in the Amazon Prime Show "30 The Series" along with two other songs. Mike is also a Lennon Award winner in the 2017 John Lennon Songwriting Contest for his original song "Mob Music", the title-track off of his iTunes Chart-Topping sophomore album. In 2014, Mike won 2 OUTmusic Awards (with 5 nominations, the most that year) including the highly coveted Humanitarian Songwriter of the Year for his song "Be Strong (LGBT Youth)". "Be Strong" was selected as Boston Pride's Flag-Raising Anthem. 

Mike holds a Bachelor's of Music in Jazz Saxophone & Music Education from Berklee College of Music, as well as a Master's of Music in Music Theory & Composition from New York University where he currently teaches Songwriting and Composition as an Adjunct Professor. Mike has performed with Ada Vox, Matt Alber, Esera Tuaolo, Ruth Pointer (Pointer Sisters), Cassandra Wilson, Esperanza Spaulding, Varla Jean Merman and many more. He performs and music-directs various shows in Provincetown, MA.

Season 8 Fellows

Season Six Trailer

Twenty Summers Season Six took place in Provincetown's historic Hawthorne Barn between May 10 and June 15, 2019 where we hosted six weekends of concerts, conversations, artist open studios, and community events, presenting an eclectic mix of both emerging and established musicians, writers, cultural figures, activists, and artists. Our season was made possible by the support of our generous sponsors and donors.

Hello Neighbor: Climate Migrants & Community Journalism with Brian Vines

Brian Vines is a Chicagoan by birth and a New Yorker by choice. After completing the Masters Program in Broadcast Journalism at Boston University’s College of Communication he fetched coffee for some of the most respected journalists and news figures in the world during his tenure at CNN. After a stint in political communications Brian fell in love with his own reflection and reported for here! networks, NYC-TV, Brooklyn Independent Media, the internationally syndicated VJIAM show, and Broad Band Network3 among others. In addition to reporting, show running and producing Brian is also a skilled host and moderator of live events on topics ranging from contemporary memoir to police brutality. A dedicated cyclist, NPR subscriber, and podcast enthusiast, Brian can be spotted balling-on-a-budget, fighting the urge to binge watch and answering questions about his hair.

Vital Signs: Artist Talk with Maynard Monrow

Interviewer: Brian Vines

Maynard Monrow was born in Hollywood, California and currently lives in New York City. Monrow received his BFA and MFA from California Institute of the Arts. His work has been exhibited at numerous institutions and galleries including: The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Hollywood, FL; Gavlak Gallery LA and Palm Beach; Booth Gallery, New York, NY; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, NY and ACME Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2005). He has staged international performances in Rome, Italy, and participated in numerous projects including Ruffian’s Spring 2016 Ready-to-Wear Collection and LAX Art’s L.A.P.D. Billboard Project.

Poetry–Speaking to and Speaking with Raymond Antrobus

Interpreting services provided by codabrothers.com

Raymond Antrobus was born in London to an English mother and Jamaican father. He is a Cave Canem Fellow and author of ‘The Perseverance’ and 'All The Names Given' both being published in the US this year by Tin House. His first children's picturebook 'Can Bears Ski?' illustrated by Polly Dunbar is published by Candlewick Press. His work has been featured on NPR, BBC, The Guardian, Lit Hub, POETRY Magazine among others. His accolades include a Ted Hughes Award, Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award, the Rathbone Folio Prize and he was awarded an MBE for his contribution to English language literature. He is currently based in Oklahoma City.

Moving the Needle: Writing and Filmmaking with Shaina Feinberg

Shaina Feinberg is a writer/director from New York City. Her book Every Body – a candid look at sex from every angle – came out in January 2021 from Little, Brown. Her bi-weekly column in The New York Times, "Scratch" is an illustrated look at the world of business. Shaina is also a filmmaker who specializes in micro-budget filmmaking. In 2019, she was named by Indiewire as 1 of 25 queer filmmakers to watch. She has directed two original series for Audible: Aliens of Extraordinary Ability, starring Maeve Higgins and Cristela Alonzo, and Phreaks, starring Christian Slater, Carrie Coon and Justice Smith. She is a visiting professor at the Vermont College of Fine Art in the MFA program for film. She lives in Brooklyn.

Spaces of Reconnecting: Of Deafness, Internment, and Pandemic w/ Jeffrey Mansfield

Jeffrey Yasuo Mansfield is a design director at MASS Design Group and a Ford-Mellon Disability Futures fellow, whose work explores the relationships between architecture, landscape, and power. Jeffrey is a recipient of a Graham Foundation grant and a John W. Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress for his work on Architecture of Deafness, which explores how Deaf schools and other Deaf Spaces emerged as sites of cultural resistance. Jeffrey holds a Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and an AB in Architecture from Princeton University. Deaf since birth, Jeffrey is a Yonsei, or fourth-generation, Japanese American, and attended a deaf school in Massachusetts, where his earliest intuitions about the relationship between aesthetics, geography, and power emerged.

Interpreting services provided by codabrothers.com