Tag: Nantucket Book Festival

Nantucket Book Festival 2025
Nantucket Arts, Nantucket Events

A Rare Alchemy of Writers & Readers

This week, from Thursday, June 12 through Sunday, June 15, more than 20 distinguished writers will be on Nantucket Island to talk about their craft in onstage conversations, readings, and panel discussions, and they will interact with readers in several informal social gatherings. Tim Ehrenberg, creator of Tim Talks Books and President of the Nantucket Book Foundation, says the four-day Nantucket Book Festival as a favorite among “year-rounders, summer residents, weekenders…the commonality is a love for books. There is such a genuine feeling of connection all weekend long…this connection has been at the root of the Book Festival since the very beginning.”

Reading Jackie
Nantucket History & People

A Voice Alive on the Page

In contemporary American literature, Dawn Tripp stands out as an author who bridges the worlds of poetry, essay, and historical fiction with a strong voice and impressive literary finesse. A nationally bestselling author whose novel The Season of Open Water won the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction, Tripp is a writer with an extraordinary ability to paint with her words a compelling picture of complex historical figures and intimate human experiences. Tripp’s literary craftsmanship and storytelling skills overlay deep and careful research of her subjects—her newest novel, Jackie, took her ten years to research and write.

Nantucket Events, Nantucket History & People

The Magical Realism of Katherine Howe

Every June, the Nantucket Book Festival brings together readers and authors in a celebration of the written word. Over the years, this weekend event has welcomed to our island hundreds of well-known authors including Alice Hoffman, Dennis Lehane, Tiya Miles, Marlon James, Jodi Picoult, Sebastian Junger, Imani Perry, Hernan Diaz, Jennifer Weiner, Charles Graeber, Isabel Wilkerson, James McBride, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, and Azar Nafisi. The Book Fest also showcases Nantucket writers: Nathaniel Philbrick, Elin Hilderbrand, James Sulzer, Nancy Thayer, Steve Sheppard, and Gabrielle Burnham have made appearances. Kwame Alexander, Margaret Atwood, Erik Larson are among the more than 20 authors who will speak at the 2024 Festival held this Thursday through Sunday.

An Island Point of View, Nantucket Essays, Nantucket Voices

You’ll Need a Bookcase

I can’t buy a decent bookcase. If I want, I can get one on Wayfair or from Ikea that looks like a bookcase, but the shelves won’t hold anything heavier than a take out meal. I can find one created by a craftsman made of walnut and sturdy enough to hold the Harvard Library in leatherbond, but the bill is roughly what you would pay for a used Toyota. And it won’t buy the groceries.

Featured Articles

Nantucket Book Festival Art Contest Winner Chosen

Nantucket Book Festival Art Contest winner is Marianne Kelley, whose art was chosen from 39 entries with a vote by the Nantucket Book Festival Committee. This art will be featured on 2023 Festival posters, program cover, website, and social media.  Kelley lives on Nantucket year-round. She is a regular patron […]

Nantucket Events

The Art of Walking

At 9 am this Friday, June 17, the first author talk of the 2022 Nantucket Book Festival will feature a conversation between Ben Shattuck and Nathaniel Philbrick about walking, retracing journeys, finding a nation, and finding yourself. Both authors explored these themes in recent books: Shattuck in Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau and Philbrick in his Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy. 

Skp Finley
Nantucket Arts, Nantucket Events, Nantucket History & People

A Whale of a Story

History is a gift. Good or bad, right or wrong, it shows us where we came from and, if we’re wise enough to pay attention and listen to it, where not to tread again. And in spite of all the schooling, all the television and movies, and all the stories passed down from our elders, there are still pieces of our past that, to many, remain undiscovered. 

Nantucket Book Festival | Nantucket, MA
Nantucket Arts, Nantucket Events

Watch Art Made & Meet the Authors

Artistic endeavors are being celebrated across our island this June as two festivals overlap in dates: one festival honoring art and another that salutes those who write and those who love to read. The Artists Association of Nantucket’s Plein Air Festival begins on Tuesday, June 14 and continues through Sunday, […]