Picture this: rabbit-skin glue simmering in a Massachusetts studio, its Renaissance-era scent mingling with gold leaf and hot solder, as Brian Lies builds a 14th-century Italian portrait ground for a single spread in Cat Nap. What begins as a kitten's cozy nap on a couch spirals into a dream-chase leaping across centuries—Egyptian reliefs in plaster, illuminated manuscripts on goatskin parchment, vivid stained-glass panels—all handcrafted by Lies in their historic techniques.

Oereishi Aeoma is a poet, storyteller, and performer whose work explores the meeting point of intuition, creativity, and community. Rejecting rigid labels, he approaches art as a living practice—one rooted in presence, emotion, and the courage of honest expression. In a region often known for its reserve, Aeoma has quietly gathered an attentive audience across New England through live readings and storytelling performances. "I can feel when something shifts in the room,"  he

Elin Johansonn at The Living Room Collective. Photo credit Mark Amudson On Loss, Hands, and the Return of Community Some creations begin with inspiration.Others begin with absence. During the pandemic, many of the quiet structures that once held women together—pregnancy groups, craft circles, spaces of shared learning—simply vanished. Not dramatically, but quietly. They were there one moment, and gone the next. For Elin, who had recently moved to Barrington and was expectin

On Origins and Awareness There are moments when politics stops feeling like a civic exercise and begins to resemble something colder—more mechanical, less human. The machinery continues to move, yet the warmth seems to have drained from the room. John Houle noticed that change from inside the machine. Long before he became a novelist, he worked campaigns across Rhode Island’s political landscape: council races, mayoral contests, statewide ambitions. He learned the rhythms of

Teloneio, Kardamilli, Greece. Fully restored with local materials and using building techniques long lost in the centuries. Photo: Julia Klimi We almost went to New York. Snow intervened — as snow does — and instead of sitting inside a lecture hall at New York Tech School of Architecture & Design, we listened from home as architect Eleni Tsigarida from ETSI Architects spoke about failing thrust lines, invisible cracks, and why demolition is never neutral. When Notre Dame burn

Milena Pagan runs two restaurants in Providence and Boston. She spends twenty to thirty hours a week on pastries alone. She composts. She starts her own seeds. She makes scratch-made sweet plantain waffles in a culture that has already decided what sweet plantain waffles are worth — and charges accordingly anyway. When we asked her what she was building, she didn't hesitate. Not a restaurant, she said. Not a farm, not a community, though it is perhaps all of those things. I t

Jayne Babine steaming her handwoven commission — one of the limited works now hanging at Newport Harbor Island Resort, made to be touched. The incident happened on an ordinary afternoon in Warren. A banner outside a building. A husband who noticed it. A woman who had nothing to lose by stopping. Jayne knew nothing about weaving when she walked into the Handkerchief Factory. She signed up for a two-hour class, made a kitchen towel on a floor loom, and understood immediately th

What if symptoms aren't problems to silence, but messages asking for attention? Dr. Chrysanthi Kazantzis (Dr. Kaz) approach to naturopathic medicine begins with listening—to the body's quiet signals, to the wisdom of ancient traditions, to the interconnected systems that conventional medicine often treats in isolation. From her practice in Rhode Island, she offers gentle, consistent support: small daily shifts in eating, breathing, resting. Not force, but partnership. Not pre

Daniel Penengo doesn't want to build you a garden. He wants to teach you to let the garden build itself—season by season, through patience and perspective, until the outer landscape mirrors the inner one and you're no longer fighting nature but moving with it. Born in Montevideo and raised tending his father's prize-winning roses on Long Island, Daniel now cultivates a 5,000-square-foot neighborhood farm in Barrington called Little Uruguay. His philosophy: the outer landscape

Julie Gerstenblatt's Daughters of Nantucket is a captivating story of the biographies of 3 distinct women at Nantucket mid-nineteen century. Meeting Julie Gerstenblatt was an extremely pleasant experience: her warm countenance is as reassuring as is powerful - it came as no surprise from a writer who took enormous risks with her debut novel. Julie's resolution to write historical fiction for the first time, to create the voice of a woman of color as a white writer, and bring

When Sue McFarland holds freshly shorn spring wool from flocks east of the Berkshires, she sees what it will become: vessels, baskets, sculptural forms made using techniques as old as agriculture itself. Sue came to felting two decades ago, apprenticing with a local feltmaker after years of training in fine arts. The ancient technique -water, heat, agitation transforming loose fibers into dense fabric- became her primary creative language. What drew her wasn't just the craft

In 2020, Linda Rhynard fell and shattered her left hand, wrist, and elbow. Months of surgeries and physical therapy followed. In the still quiet moments at night, instead of mourning what she'd lost, she made a decision: Every August 19th—the anniversary of her injury—she would learn something new, reactivate the creative part of herself that corporate life had required her to set aside. She volunteered at a local museum recreating 1790s farm life. She learned to spin. Then,

For six years, Chris Watson, has met with a writing group every Sunday morning. A quarter million words later, there's a mystery novel agents are trying to sell, children's books in progress, and stories about families lost and found. "If I didn't write I don't know what I would do." We talk Shakespeare, coal-fired pizza with Agatha Christie, and why writers in 2026 can't be scared to write down the truth. Writers in Our Backyard — coming in the spring issue of Khiton Free Pr

Elwood Donnelly performing with Atwater-Donnelly, the wife-husband duo he's toured with for 38 years SNEAK PEEK VERSION Elwood Donnelly on Patience, Pattern, and the Work of Hands Elwood Donnelly's basement studio in Warren smells of laundry soap, heating oil, and reed. Windows high on the foundation let in light—cats prowling the side yard, insects at the glass. Sometimes his wife Aubrey practices clog dancing upstairs. Sometimes he weaves to music. Most times, silence. 4 r

The first time I met my now best friend, she had dropped off her son for a playdate, and I invited her to stay for dinner. Somehow apologetically I said, "I'd love for you to stay for dinner but I am afraid I only have peasant food to offer- it's lentil soup and home-made olive bread for us tonight". My friend smiled with a deep warm smile and said:"But, Anna, this is a real delicacy, and honestly, the best kind of food! I love lentil soup!" That evening, as we enthusiastical

The Solace of Craft There is a particular kind of quiet that arrives when you make something with your hands. Not the brittle quiet of distraction—screens dimmed, notifications silenced, the mind still buzzing like a light left on in the next room—but the deeper hush that comes when your body remembers what it was made to do. When fingers find their work. When time, instead of being chased, becomes a companion walking beside you. Craft is not merely a hobby. It is a small, st

Before the book tours and the shiny stickers on the cover, there was a kitchen table. A pot of coffee, a stack of bills, a notebook pushed between crumbs and school forms. In Rhode Island, some of the world’s most beloved stories began exactly like this—scribbled after bedtime, drafted on lunch breaks, whispered into the glow of a quiet lamp. Writers in Our Backyard  is Khiton’s intimate conversations with these local voices: the authors who went from neighborhood walks to Ne

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