During my pre-Vineyard days in Washington, DC, I quickly learned the standard when-you-meet-someone-new questions: “Where do you work” or “What do you do?” Well, not on Martha’s Vineyard. People here ask what town you live in (but that’s a topic for another issue) and what brought you to the Island.

Everyone has their own story about how they came here. Just among those of us in the magazine office, we have a guy with generations of family ties who went from summer kid to year-rounder, a woman who came on vacation in her thirties and saw a classified ad that led to a job here, and an intern who was born and raised on the Island. Over the years we’ve included many personal tales of what brings people to Martha’s Vineyard and how and why they stay; their stories are often fascinating.

In this edition, we hear from six Vineyarders about how they moved to the Island year-round (page 22). We talk with a young woman who grew up here and how she was able to return after college and make a living (page 30). Writer Moira Silva contributes to this conversation with a short essay about moving from Boston one dank March day (page 40).

A natural progression of this discussion leads to where people come from, and to that end we take an in-depth look at the Azores, the Portuguese islands that many Vineyarders’ ancestors called home (page 42).

How did you first come to find yourself on the Island? And do you have a tale about moving here? Perhaps that story is still being written.