Fourth Annual Nantucket Book Festival Kicks Off in June

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.

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.