The “Rock the Boat” community party will take place at the firehouse on Brick Kiln Road from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, September 18. Tickets are $30 for adults and $15 for children 10 and under. Sponsorships ranging from $500 to $10,000 are also being sought. Tickets are available at the Wharf Shop and Sag Harbor Liquor Store, and additional information can be obtained by visiting sagharborpartnership.org.

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. announced this week that he had nominated the former home of the Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck on Bluff Point Lane in Sag Harbor for $500,000 in state funding to help turn it into the John Steinbeck Writer’s Center.

The novelist Bret Anthony Johnston, who is also the director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, gave Sag Harbor residents a preview of his vision for the John Steinbeck Writer’s Center that has been proposed for the Nobel Prize-winning author’s Sag Harbor home at a “Projections” panel discussion at the Sag Harbor Cinema on May 1.

This week, the Sag Harbor Partnership announced that it is working with an as yet unnamed university to create The Steinbeck Writer’s Retreat at the site and launching a fundraising drive to help cover the cost of buying the property, the price of which has been reduced by about $1.2 million.