Last Friday afternoon, three poets laureate of the Vineyard gathered around a table at the Gazette office to reflect on their growth as poets, from a solitary practice to reaching beyond those boundaries in their respective communities. Steve Ewing traveled from Chappaquiddick where he was working at his day job as a dock builder, and Justen Ahren and Dan Waters drove from West Tisbury and their other lives as a landscaper and owner of Indian Hill Press, respectively.

At the end of the dock in Menemsha Harbor sits a stately white yacht. At 75 feet, it can’t fit anywhere closer in the harbor. Inside the yacht, a woman often sits cross-legged in a bright sitting room, imagining far-off worlds full of romance and historical intrigue. She’s Kitty Pilgrim, CNN correspondent-turned-novelist, and she’s been hard at work writing her third book, while promoting, by boat, her latest release, The Stolen Chalice.

Many overlook Martha’s Vineyard in the off-season, when beaches no longer accommodate bikinis, business owners stow away their cash registers, and the Flying Horses cease to fly. But Phyllis Meras, author of In Every Season, recently released by Schiffer Publishing, has a great appreciation for this time of relative hibernation, for humans at least. For her, the off-season is when the familiar becomes mysterious, and the unrelenting cadence of nature’s course penetrates the human psyche.

Best-selling author and Chilmark resident Linda Fairstein has said that one of her greatest pleasures is the moment she holds in her hand a copy of her latest book. Fans will feel the same way on July 10 when Dutton publishes Night Watch, the latest of Ms. Fairstein’s engrossing crime fiction novels.