Below is a list of authors who have accepted the invitation to appear at the 2016 Nantucket Book Festival. The Festival also features book signings by approximately 50 local and regional authors. The Festival is also pleased to offer children’s programming, from storytimes for toddlers in the Nantucket Atheneum garden to presentations for students of all ages by notable authors, which this year will include Jack Gantos and Richard Michelson, 2009 Massachusetts Book Award finalist.įestival organizers expect a full slate of 25-30 presenting authors to be scheduled by this spring. Ticketed events include Sunday’s author breakfast at the White Elephant, the host hotel of the Festival, as well as a pig roast at Cisco Brewers. Most events are free and open to the public. Nathaniel Philbrick is well-known to Nantucketers and off-islanders for writing the National Book Award-winning saga In the Heart of the Sea, recently released as a major motion picture by director Ron Howard.īook lovers attending The Nantucket Book Festival can enjoy author presentations throughout the day on both Friday and Saturday and an Opening Night Celebration at Nantucket’s historic Unitarian Universalist Meeting House. Besides her long list of awards and accomplishments, Diane Ackerman has been honored as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library. Several authors scheduled to appear at the Festival have been recognized by the National Book Critics Circle and have won or been finalists for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. rollicking, complex, and highly ambitious novel … a work of monumental value that rewards the time it takes to read it.”

When asked about the significance of a Jamaican winning the Man Booker, poet Kwame Dawes said, “A Caribbean writer has not won this award since VS Naipaul did in 1971 for his novel In a Free State.

Marlon James, winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize, widely considered to be the world’s most important literary award, will make a featured appearance at the 2016 Nantucket Book Festival to discuss his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings.

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