The Nantucket Book Festival is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year with a stellar schedule of in-person talks, forums, gatherings and celebrations of writers and readers from June 16-19. Most of their events are free, with a few special events requiring paid tickets. The schedule is now online and tickets are selling fast at NantucketBookFestival.org.
The festival’s more than 30 events begin at 5 pm on Thursday, June 16 witha “Funny Business” cocktail party featuring author Michael Hill. “Before Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah, and even before Doonesbury, there was Art Buchwald,” writes Hill. His book, a mix of biography, correspondence, comic capers and poignant scenes, gives us insight into Buchwald’s “sense of good old American humor and decency.”
Friday and Saturday, June 17 and 18, are chock-full of back-to-back events featuring well-known authors, including Tiya Miles, Dave Barry, Alice Hoffman, Mitchell S. Jackson, Louise Penny, Ben Shattuck, Azar Nafisi, Mitch Albom, Imbolo Mbue, and more, along with Nantucket’s own Nat Philbrick, James Sulzer, Nancy Thayer, and Steve Sheppard.
The Nantucket Book Festival’s Opening Celebration on Friday evening extols the bond of literature and community to which the Festival is dedicated. This year it features authors Qian Julie Wang, Mitchell Jackson, and Azar Nafisi, who will share how books connect us to each other. Also at the festival opening, the Nantucket Book Foundation will recognize island youth who show great promise as writers with the Young Writer Awards, a cornerstone of the Festival.
After the Opening Celebration, the annual Author Dinner at the White Elephant will offer the chance to dine and chat with many of the festival authors. This is the only fundraising event of the festival, and tickets are now available.
Another highlight of the weekend is a rare appearance by the Rock Bottom Remainders at 8pm on Saturday, June 18. This “garage band” of authors includes some of today’s shining literary lights. Between them, they’ve published more than 150 titles, sold more than 350 million books, and their words have been translated into more than 25 languages. But on this night, they’re rock stars. Four ringers help them out: drummer Josh Kelly, Erasmo Paolo on saxophone, Sam Barry on harmonica, and Janine Sabino on vocals. Hailed by critics as having “one of the world highest ratios of noise to talent,” the Remainders have no music videos, no record contract, no Grammy® nominations—but they do have more than 159,000 hits on Google.
Buy your tickets now at NantucketBookFestival.org before they sell out, and use the posted schedule to create your festival itinerary.