Author of daring escape tale and Shirley Chisholm biographer at Provincetown Book festival

It’s 1848, and a young enslaved married couple, Ellen and William Craft, make an imaginative escape. Ellen disguises herself as a wealthy disabled white man, and William pretends to be “his” slave.

Provincetown Book Festival keynote speaker Ilyon Woo tells the Crafts’ story in her book “Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom.” Emmy-winning news reporter Susan Tran will interview Woo about the book at the festival at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 30. This year’s book festival will run from Sept. 29-Oct. 1 at the Provincetown Library, 356 Commercial St. 

Let’s get back to the Crafts. How did they pull off their escape? 

“They are out and about day and night. They're taking steamboats, and they're taking buses and other public conveyances,” Woo said. “They were going right under the noses of the enslavers and people who had captured them and threatened to return them back. … 

“(Ellen’s) mother is an enslaved woman named Maria, and her biological father is also her first enslaver. She has a very light complexion, which really was a source of pain for her in her childhood because her biological father's wife was so enraged by the sight of her and her resemblance to her father.” 

Woo became interested in the Crafts’ story in the 1990s during her time in graduate school at Columbia University in New York. The story kept calling her back over the years and she started in-depth research in 2016. 

“It's an incredible story of reaching emancipation. It is an adventure story, in some ways it's a spiritual story, it's a love story, it's so many different things with so many different layers. … I really can't wait to share that, share some of my experiences with the readers.”

'Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics'

The festival also will focus on another nonfiction book related to race in American History: Anastasia Curwood’s “Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics.” 

Shirley Chisholm made history as the first African American congresswoman and later as the first Black woman to run for the U.S. presidency.

Curwood and Bob Frishman, Chisholm’s former speech writer, will take part in a conversation at the festival at 1:30 p.m. Oct. 1. Curwood contacted Frishman almost 17 years ago as a source for the biography. 

“I had worked for another member of Congress for seven years and then went to work for (Chisholm) around 1980 because she needed a press secretary,” Frishman says. 

“I think she didn't really know that she would use me as a speechwriter until she had me write a speech and then she liked it, and I went on to write 84 speeches.” 

Frishman says he welcomes the opportunity to talk at the festival about what Chisholm stood for. 

“Unbought and unbossed, she was one of the first black women to really put her head out of the trenches in a way that said, ‘The men aren't gonna keep me down and the white establishment isn't gonna keep me down.’” 

According to Frishman. Chisholm was just as involved, if not more so, in women’s rights than in civil-rights matters. Chisholm faced, he says, “a huge amount of opposition from Black male politicians.” 

“We kind of forget … the state of women's rights even in the ’60s and early ’70s. … The whole Title 9 and girls in sports and everything, that was all part of her doing. … 

“People know her name and admire her, but maybe don't quite understand the depth of what she did and how the country might be different now if she'd never been born or been elected.”  

Rose Dorothea Award goes to Provincetown native Frank Xavier Gaspar

This year’s Rose Dorothea Award ― given by the library’s board of trustees to writers with a strong connection to the Outer Cape who have made a significant contribution to the world of writing ― will be presented to Provincetown native Frank Xavier Gaspar. A reception will be held at 6 p.m. Sept. 29. 

Gaspar’s grandparents were immigrants from the Azorean Islands of Pico and Sao Miguel. His first novel, “Leaving Pico,” won the Barnes & Noble Discovery Prize and the California Book Award, and was named a New York Times Notable Book. Gaspar is the author of six collections of poetry and two novels.  

Gaspar has incorporated his upbringing in Provincetown in his novels and poetry. He recalls his upbringing as “behind the times,” his family having an icebox instead of a refrigerator and a coal stove for heat (“Winters were tough”).

“I had no prospects, you know. … Nobody in my house knew what a college was, and we had no money.” 

Roomers his family took in over the summer provided the spark of inspiration for him. 

“(They) were exotic and marvelous and I was quite taken by their differences. … In those days, they (artists) would be out in plein air, with their easels, beautiful colors, painting the wharves and the fishing boats …  “I really wanted to be like them. … They were colorful, they were interesting, they were happy.” 

Gaspar set out for New York with his $5 typewriter, which he still has. After getting drafted into the Vietnam War, he took advantage of the GI Bill and went to college. He relentlessly “wrote, wrote and wrote” until he was invited to the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine. 

Now Gaspar is a Long Beach, California, resident, but, he says, all of his work “comes from Provincetown.” 

More festival information is available at www.provincetownbookfestival.org/

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Tales of escape, bravery at Provincetown Book Festival Sept. 29-Oct. 1