Twenty Summers

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...

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.

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.

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 nove...

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...

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...

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...

Musician, actor, author, publisher, and jack-of-all-trades Marshall Crenshaw launches Twenty Summers' third season with an intimate acoustic solo performance. In a career now spanning four decades, Crenshaw has reached the Billboard Top 40 and been nominated for a Golden Globe Award. As a stage and film actor, he has portrayed other musicians, ranging from Buddy Holly to John Lennon. Since 2011, C...

On May 21, 2016, we welcomed Nicole Atkins to the Barn. Her debut album, Neptune City, paid homage to her New Jersey hometown and won her a place on Rolling Stone's list of Top 10 Artists to Watch. Since then, she has produced two more--Mondo Amore and Slow Phaser--and toured widely through the U.S. and Europe.

Writer, illustrator, and photographer Garance Dore visited the barn on June 11, 2016, for an interview on the current state of fashion, style, and her career with Twenty Summers co-founder Ricky Opaterny. Dore's eponymous blog reaches millions of readers, and the New York Times Magazine has called her the "guardian of all style." She has won the Council of Fashion Designers of America's...