4th Annual Nantucket Book Festival Announces Authors, Host & Debut of New Poets

The Nantucket Book Festival kicks off summer with a stellar roster of authors who will appear June 19-21, 2015, at the annual event, now in its fourth year. For three days, booklovers will gather in historic Nantucket venues for a series of author readings, panel discussions, and social events that provide opportunities for casual conversations between writers and readers. Most events are free.

Among the 28 participating authors for this year's Festival are Scott Turow, master of the legal thriller; Anita Diamant (The Red Tent, The Boston Girl); Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books); Ishmael Beah (A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier); Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon; Bret Anthony Johnston (Corpus Christi, Remember Me Like This); Alice Hoffman (The Museum of Extraordinary Things, Nightbird), and Nathaniel Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea, Bunker Hill). Literary genres represented include fiction, memoirs, biography, poetry, and a strong contingent of authors in the children's and young adult categories.

The Typewriter Rodeo, a group of poets based in Austin, Texas, will be on hand to type custom poems on any subject in the Festival tent on Friday and Saturday. Founded in 2013,

The Typewriter Rodeo, a group of writers with performance backgrounds, has made appearances at over 40 events nationwide. This is their first appearance in New England.

Attendees will have the opportunity to give the Typewriter Rodeo poets a topic, and they will create and type on a vintage typewriter a personalized, original poem in minutes.

In addition to author readings and interviews, the Festival will host an outdoor exhibit of 60+ local authors selling and signing their books on Friday and Saturday under a tent outside the Nantucket Atheneum; 'Authors in Bars' on Saturday night; and optional ticketed hospitality events including author brunches; and a pig roast at Cisco Brewery that wraps up the Festival on Sunday.