Author Talk: Lee Roscoe with Artist Robert Peters: Wampanoag Art For the Ages

In a series of live, one-hour Zoom events, host Karen Dukess, author of The Last Book Party, will interview acclaimed, debut, and award-winning authors of fiction and non-fiction about their new books and their paths to publication. Available individually or as a series, the interviews will include time for questions from the audience. Events are FREE although donations greatly appreciated!

Lee Roscoe, author of Wampanoag Art for the Ages, Traditional and Transitional, is a longtime journalist, currently correspondent for Artscope and Provincetown magazines. She has written about the Wampanoag for many publications, including The Journal of the Genealogical Society of Cape Cod and Provincetown Arts magazine, and has long been involved in indigenous justice issues. A former environmental educator, she’s an awarded environmental activist (saving hundreds of acres of Cape land, some sacred to the Wampanoag). She is also an award-winning playwright whose work is often supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Her most recent creation, in collaboration with Janet Murphy Robertson, is the film, Four Plays for a Planet in Peril. The Warning, one of the Four is premiering in New York! at the 10th Anniversary Chelsea Film Festival (Oct. 13-31) to view online and vote for the warning: https://filmfestplus.com/get-pass/?festival=CH22PTY6X4UW.  She is the author of Dreaming Monomoy’s  Past, Walking its Present  about the interacting nature and culture of a typical coastal area; a subjective and objective account, and of Wrap Yourself a Designer Dress (based on her pioneering modular, multi-wrap designs the Instant Dress.)

For more see: www.artistsandmusicians.org/writers_corner/leeroscoe.htm

Robert Peters is a Mashpee Wampanoag Artist, Poet, and Author. He published his first book “Da Goodie Monsta” in the fall of 2009. He released Thirteen Moons Calendar A Meditation on Indigenous Life in 2015 and again in 2020. “Thirteen Moons” is accompanied by poetry, essays and thoughts – written over a span of twenty years. It was created to promote understanding and healing among indigenous people everywhere. Robert was commissioned to work on three murals in 2021 and he is currently working on two screenplays and a stage play.

Robert’s family moved to the Wampanoag home land of Mashpee when he was ten. Here his father Russell entered a life-long battle to regain land and sovereignty for the Mashpee Wampanoag People. As a child, Robert witnessed the 1976 Wampanoag Indian land claim, trial and the tribe’s quest for Federal Recognition. Robert retired from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority after 24 years of service. During this period, he observed the culture of Boston’s subway system working as a motorman, union steward and at times a civil rights activist on the MBTA’s Orange Line. He drew pictures, took notes and made commentary.

Today Robert continues writing, painting, and working with youth. He is a fire keeper and a keeper of oral tradition. Learn more about Robert at https://ccmht.org/robert-peters.