In light of the covid-19 crisis, the Nantucket Book Festival will transition its 2020 event to a virtual format. Our traditional multi-venue presentations in downtown Nantucket will be foregone. In their place, the Nantucket Book Foundation, producer of the festival, and its executive director, Maddie Hjulstrom, are strategizing ways to fulfill the festival’s objectives while ensuring everyone’s safety.

The plan includes opportunities to engage with the 2020 author lineup via podcasts and videos which will be embedded on our website. Later this year, the foundation plans to fête island authors, as well as resume its Visiting Author program at local schools in the fall.

For now, if you’re looking for some serenity amidst sad and sometimes frightening news, visit our website or blog to read reviews of 2020 festival authors’ books, including Nancy Thayer’s inspiring Girls of Summer; Kate Russo’s smartly stylish Super Host; Jami Attenberg’s family tale All This Could Be Yours; Diane Rehm’s riveting When My Time Comes; and Imbolo Mbue’s haunting and hilarious How Beautiful We Were.

(And here’s a timely and prescient read: Superbugs: The Race to Stop an Epidemic by physician Matt McCarthy, a 2019 festival author.)

Even without the real-life Nantucket Book Festival in 2020, our organizers and authors continue to celebrate the written word!

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