Come, Dip a Toe in the Creative Current
Trying to stay creative? Join us, a set of writer and artist friends. We’re inspired and supported by Martha's Vineyard's beauty, challenges, and historically creative vibe—and The Creative Current is where we share ups and downs and lessons learned about staying inspired and sane, on the island and off.
Whether you’re on MV, love to visit, or never been, turn to The Creative Current for fresh ideas on creative productivity and a group of art friends to share yours with.
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Meet the Creative Current Crew
Kate Altman has been an interior designer in California and New York and a film production designer (Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas). Now she sews, stitches and teaches in her Vineyard Haven studio. She spends a lot of time looking and listening to island life and writing about what was and what is. She feels very lucky to call Martha’s Vineyard her year-round full-time home.
T. Elizabeth Bell swapped writing legal memos for crafting sea-breezy, toes-in-the-sand novels inspired by her love of Martha’s Vineyard. A beachcomber, wild blueberry-and-beach plum picker and jam-maker, she also dabbles in silversmithing, glittering Mardi Gras shoes and capturing the island’s beauty through her Instagram (@tb.dc.mv). Despite winning no awards whatsoever, her first two novels, Goats in the Time of Love and Counting Chickens, are local best sellers. Her eagerly awaited third novel, Sheepish, hits the shelves in June 2025.
Jan Brogan is a storyteller who doesn’t like to stay in one lane. She’s a journalist and author of four published murder mysteries and a true crime book, The Combat Zone: Murder, Race and Boston’s Struggle for Justice, which was short-listed for both Agatha and Anthony Awards for the best nonfiction of 2021. She’s authored essays and poems and been frustrated by screenplays. Currently she is co-writing a memoir with a whale scientist while also revising her historical fiction about 19th century whaling wives. She’s taught writing at the high school, continuing ed and university levels, and instructed at Boston University’s Summer Journalism Academy for almost ten years.
Once a Soviet expert for the US government, Brenda L. Horrigan has been bringing her love of historical research, writing, and creative-community building to Martha’s Vineyard for a couple decades. She co-founded the MV Washashore Writers Collective and is currently collaborating with the Martha’s Vineyard Museum on an exhibit about a 19th-c. bohemian artist colony with the tongue-in-cheek nickname of Oklahoma. Her first novel, based on her DC years, was first runner-up in the 2022 Faulkner-Wisdom International Writing novel-in-progress competition. It’s out on sub (through the Laura Gross Literary Agency); meanwhile, she’s busy crafting essays about Oklahoma while planning her novel’s sequel.
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