Twenty Summers

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.

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, Crenshaw has served as the host of WFUV's radio show Bottomless Pit, and he is a contributor to Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger's HBO series Vinyl.

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 Eugenia Sheppard Media Award and is the author of the 2015 bestseller Love Style Life.