Fisher Real Estate is excited to share that Nantucket will once again host an esteemed celebration of literature this summer! The 14th annual Nantucket Book Festival is set to take place from June 12th to 15th, 2025. This year’s lineup of renowned authors promises to be nothing short of extraordinary.
Featured guests include investigative journalist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward; Imani Perry, National Book Award Winner and Princeton University professor; bestselling author Carl Hiaasen, whose work Bad Monkey inspired the Apple TV series starring Vince Vaughn; and acclaimed novelist and Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks. Joining them is celebrated poet and author Ocean Vuong, known for the highly anticipated novel The Emperor of Gladness; bestselling author Jennifer Finney Boylan; and Oprah’s Book Club favorite Wally Lamb, whose upcoming novel The River is Waiting is generating much excitement.
Also presenting are an array of extraordinary authors such as Meenakshi Ahamed, Richard Cary, Billy Costa, Jenny Johnson, Kim Coleman Foote, Lisa Genova, Alice Hoffman, Patrick Radden Keefe, Betsy Lerner, Jason Reynolds, and more. The lineup continues with writers like Suzy Welch, Charmaine Wilkerson, and Jonathan Waterman, spanning a diverse range of genres and themes that are sure to captivate readers.
The Nantucket Book Festival, managed by the nonprofit Nantucket Book Foundation, has become a must-visit summer destination for literature lovers. The four-day event offers author readings, panel discussions, and social gatherings designed to connect writers and readers in an inviting atmosphere. Better yet, most of these enriching events are free and conveniently located within walking distance of the ferries.
Mark your calendars because tickets for the Festival’s Author Dinner, happening Friday, June 13th, will be available on the Festival website in the coming weeks. You’ll also find the full event schedule and roster of authors representing everything from fiction to memoirs, poetry, and self-help.
The Nantucket Book Foundation goes beyond the Festival weekend, contributing to the island’s literary culture all year long. Its initiatives include literacy programs, outreach in local schools, and collaborations with community organizations—all aimed at celebrating the power of the written word to teach, connect, and inspire.
Don’t miss this remarkable gathering of literary talent! For more details, visit the Festival’s webpage at nantucketbookfestival.org.
Presenting Authors of the 2025 Nantucket Book Festival
Link to nantucketbookfestival.org
Meenakshi Ahamed is a freelance journalist and the author of A Matter of Trust: U.S.-India Relations from Truman to Trump, a sweeping narrative history of the turbulent seventy-year relationship between the two countries. Her new book is Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America. She divides her time between New York, Los Angeles, and New Delhi.
Jennifer Finney Boylan is the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Columbia’s Barnard College and a faculty member of both the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference and the Sirenland Writers’ Conference in Positano, Italy. Boylan is the author of eighteen books, including her memoir, She’s Not There, which was the first bestselling work by a transgender American. Her most recent book is a memoir-in-essays, Cleavage.
Geraldine Brooks is an Australian born novelist and journalist who lives on Martha’s Vineyard. She’s the author of bestselling novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning March, Horse, Year of Wonders and People of the Book. She was a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and has written several books of non-fiction, including Nine Parts of Desire, and most recently, her bestselling memoir of marriage and loss, Memorial Days.
Richard Cary’s autobiography in Poems, titled I Once Was a Man from Nantucket, describes his journey as a young man seeking his poetic voice, finally finding himself as an old man on his back porch. A 1964 graduate of Carnegie Mellon Theater Arts, he moved year-round to Nantucket in 1970 and retired in 2004 to Western NC. He has spent the last several years editing his autobiography in poems. It’s 750 pages long, 2 inches thick, and weighs in at 2 pounds.
Billy Costa is a three-time Emmy Award-winning on-air talent and Hall of Fame radio broadcaster. Costa has served as the voice of Boston for over thirty years on KISS 108, currently co-hosting the popular Billy and Lisa in the Morning Show as well as the weekly KISS Top 30 Countdown. Alongside his longtime partner Jenny Johnson, Costa is the host of NESN’s Dining Playbook and Meet Boston with Billy and Jenny and co-author of A Taste of Boston.
Kim Coleman Foote was born and raised in New Jersey, where she started writing fiction at the age of seven(ish). A recent fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, she has received additional fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and many others. She is the author of Coleman Hill, a publication from Sarah Jessica Parker’s publishing imprint SJP Lit.
Lisa Genova is the New York Times bestselling author of Still Alice, Left Neglected, Love Anthony, Inside the O’Briens, Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting, and now More or Less Maddy. Lisa graduated valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in biopsychology and holds a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard University. Her TED talks on Alzheimer’s disease and memory have been viewed over eleven million times.
Patti Callahan Henry is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of several novels, including The Story She Left Behind (out next week!), The Secret Book of Flora Lea, Surviving Savannah, and Becoming Mrs. Lewis. She is the recipient of the Christy Award, the Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer of the Year, and the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year. She is also a co-host of Friends & Fiction.
Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida. He is the author of fourteen previous novels, including the bestsellers Squeeze Me, Razor Girl, Bad Monkey, Star Island, Nature Girl, Skinny Dip, Sick Puppy, and Lucky You, and six bestselling children’s books, Hoot, Flush, Scat, Chomp, Skink, and Squirm. His most recent work of nonfiction is Assume the Worst. Fever Beach, Carl’s newest novel, is publishing May 13th.
Alice Hoffman is the author of more than thirty works of fiction, including When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary, The World That We Knew, The Museum of Extraordinary Things, The Dovekeepers, Here on Earth, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, and the Practical Magic series, including Practical Magic, Magic Lessons, The Rules of Magic, a selection of Reese’s Book Club, and The Book of Magic. She lives near Boston.
Jenny Johnson is a three-time Emmy Award-winning executive producer and on-air talent. Alongside her longtime partner Billy Costa, she serves as co-host of NESN’s Dining Playbook, Meet Boston with Billy and Jenny, and WBZ’s weekly radio program “Food for Thought.” Don’t miss their A Taste of Boston, a brand-new cookbook featuring recipes from 60 noted chefs.
Molly Jong-Fast is a MSNBC Political Analyst, Host of the Fast Politics Podcast & Vanity Fair Special Correspondent. Molly is an American writer, journalist, author, political commentator and podcaster. Jong-Fast is the author of three books and her memoir, How to Lose Your Mother will be coming out from Viking in June of 2025.
Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Empire of Pain, winner of the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize, and Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. His work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Orwell Prize.
Wally Lamb is the author of six New York Times bestselling novels: I’ll Take You There, We Are Water, Wishin’ and Hopin’, The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much Is True, and She’s Come Undone. Lamb also edited Couldn’t Keep It to Myself and I’ll Fly Away. His newest novel The River is Waiting will be on shelves this May. Lamb lives in Connecticut with his wife, Christine, and they have three sons.
Ann Leary is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels, The Foundling, The Children, The Good House, Outtakes from a Marriage, the memoir, An Innocent, A Broad, and her new essay collection, I’ve Tried Being Nice. She has written for numerous publications including Ploughshares, NPR, Real Simple and the New York Times. Ann and her husband Denis Leary live in New York.
Betsy Lerner is the author of the popular advice book to writers, The Forest for the Trees, and the memoirs Food and Loathing and The Bridge Ladies. She received an MFA from Columbia University in Poetry. A publishing professional for more than thirty years, Lerner is a literary agent in New York. Her first novel, Shred Sisters, was longlisted for a Debut Novel Award from The Center for Fiction and was selected as one of best 100 books by the New York Times.
Victor Luckerson is a journalist and author based in Tulsa who works to bring neglected black history to light. He is a former staff writer at The Ringer and business reporter for Time magazine. His new book, Built from the Fire, tells the true story behind Tulsa, a potent national symbol of success and solidarity and weaves an epic tale about a neighborhood that refused, more than once, to be erased.
Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Perry is the New York Times bestselling author of South to America, Looking for Lorraine, Breathe, Vexy Thing, May We Forever Stand, and now Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People. Perry, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, lives outside Philadelphia with her two sons.
Jason Reynolds is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books for children and young adults. A 2024 MacArthur Fellow, Jason is best known for his novels All American Boys and Long Way Down. Among his many accolades, Jason was named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress for 2020-2022. He was also our Nantucket Book Foundation “Visiting Author in Schools” in 2019.
Adam Ross’s debut novel, Mr. Peanut, a 2010 New York Times Notable Book. His nonfiction has been published in The New York Times Book Review, The Daily Beast, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Nashville Scene. He was the Mary Ellen von der Heyden fellow in fiction at the American Academy in Berlin, as well as a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. His current novel, Playworld, published in January 2025. He is the editor of the Sewanee Review.
Loretta J. Ross is an activist, professor, public intellectual, and cofounder of the National Center for Human Rights Education and the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. Today, Ross is an associate professor at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and is the founder of LoRossta Consulting. Her new book is Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel.
Christian Sheppard taught the“Great Books” for over a decade at the University of Chicago and is co-editor of Mystics: Presence and Aporia (University of Chicago Press). He is a professor of liberal arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, teaching Shakespeare, the Tarot de Marseilles, and East Asian classics, including the I Ching. His new book is The Ancient Wisdom of Baseball.
Wright Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN and the bestselling author of Pappyland, The Cost of These Dreams, and, most recently, The Barn, a shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare how forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta in the long lead-up to the crime, and how the truth was erased for so long. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi with his family.
Dawn Tripp is the nationally bestselling author of the novels Jackie and Georgia, finalist for the New England Book Award and winner of the Mary Lynn Kotz Award for Art in Literature. Tripp is the author of three previous novels: Game of Secrets, Moon Tide, and The Season of Open Water. She serves on the executive board of the Boston Book Festival and on the board of Gnome Surf. She graduated from Harvard and lives in Massachusetts with her sons.
Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time Is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant” and the American Book Award, he used to work as a fast-food server, which inspired The Emperor of Gladness (May 2025). Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Massachusetts and NYC.
Jon Waterman has worked as a director of a press, an editor, and a naturalist. A sought-after public speaker, his 17 books include In the Shadow of Denali, Kayaking the Vermilion Sea, Running Dry, and Into the Thaw. Jon is a frequent grantee of the National Geographic. By taking risks and tackling difficult issues, his work transcends traditional outdoor yarns and has garnered numerous awards. He lives in Carbondale, Colorado.