The Nantucket Book Festival Wants to Send You Home Feeling Better About the World

There was a moment at last year’s Nantucket Book Festival when it started to rain. The audience was gathered inside an old church, the kind of New England venue that already makes you feel like something important is about to happen, and poet and essayist Ocean Vuong was reading a newer work, “Theology,” before a packed holy house. (“Fitting,” Vuong noted at the start.) Something about the moment indeed felt celestial. Nobody moved. Nobody wanted to. “You could hear a pin drop,” says Tim Ehrenberg, president of the event, recalling the scene. “No one wanted to even move, because they were just so mesmerized by him reading his poetry. And you just can’t get that on your screen, on your phone, when you’re scrolling in bed—you don’t get that same human connection and experience. And that happens 32 times in our festival.”

That’s the case the Nantucket Book Festival has been quietly making for 15 years: that a room full of people listening to a writer they love is not only worth getting on a boat for, but worth making a special trip to savor. Next week, from June 11 through 14, the island event marks its crystal anniversary, and for anyone who’s never made the crossing—or who’s filed Nantucket away under “not for me”—the spectacular lineup of bold names (Norah O’Donnell, Richard Russo, Jenna Bush Hager) and cost (most events are free) makes a reasonable case for reconsideration.

The festival’s founding philosophy was never to go big. “Since we’re an island 30 miles to sea, we really want to host a small collection of authors, all different voices, all different genres, and give them their moment,” Ehrenberg says. “So each one has an event that’s pretty much just focused on their book. And then we host them—we have dinners, we have gatherings.” The result is something that feels more like a restorative retreat than a conference. As Ehrenberg notes, “you’ll see your favorite author, and then you’ll see them at the coffee shop.” That kind of casual proximity—the Pulitzer winner ordering a scone, the television anchor browsing shelves—is not something public events usually can deliver.

Jenna Bush Hager will appear with Shannon Garvey, Juliet Faithfull, and Emma Brodie, all authors with titles on the Today with Jenna & Sheinelle co-host’s imprint Thousand Voices. / Courtesy

This year’s roster reflects what Ehrenberg describes as “the full spectrum of the human experience.” Best-selling author Ann Patchett arrives with her brand-new novel Whistler, and sits down with Patrick Ryan, whose novel Buckeye (a “Read with Jenna” selection) became one of the quieter literary pleasures of 2025. The two are pals, and Ehrenberg is looking forward to that Saturday afternoon conversation. “If anyone ever wondered, ‘Do authors have friends; do they go to coffee and talk about their writing life?’ I think this is going to be an event where you see two writers just talking about the love of books and the love of their craft.” Elsewhere on the schedule: Tayari Jones, recently named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People, discussing her novel Kin; Richard Russo, “a GOAT in the fiction world” as Ehrenberg puts it, in conversation about Empire Falls, which turns 25 this year; Jenna Bush Hager, whose book club has done as much as anyone’s in recent memory to keep literary culture alive on network television; and CBS News senior correspondent Norah O’Donnell, who’ll be in conversation with Linda Henry, co-owner and CEO or Boston Globe Media (which, full disclosure, also owns Boston magazine). And there’s also Belle Burden, whose controversial (and wildly popular) memoir Strangers has lately taken over group chats and will be in conversation with Elin Hilderbrand—a pairing that is, for anyone who knows how deeply Hilderbrand’s novels are woven into the fabric of Nantucket life, an event unto itself.

For the adventurous festivalgoer, Ehrenberg recommends a different strategy altogether: pick a name you don’t recognize and show up anyway. He points to Dr. Joshua Bennett, whose new poetry collection We (The People of the United States) carries particular resonance in 2026, and Massachusetts-raised writer Isaac Fitzgerald, whose American Rambler traces the trail of Johnny Appleseed. “Go to an event where you look at our schedule and you’re like, ‘I’ve never heard of that author,'” Ehrenberg says. “Just try it, and you will leave saying, ‘I just met my new favorite author.'”

Novelists Dorothea Benton Frank and Elin Hilderbrand at the Nantucket Book Festival. / Courtesy

One more thing worth knowing, if you assume the festival requires an overnight stay: it doesn’t. Early morning boats from Hyannis arrive in plenty of time for the first sessions, and the last ferry departs after the final event. The logistics are more forgiving than Nantucket’s reputation suggests. And the price of admission, for nearly everything on the schedule, is nothing—a detail that Ehrenberg notes with evident satisfaction. “If you know Nantucket,” he says, “you know ‘free’ is not usually a word you correspond with it.”

By Sunday afternoon, when the weekend winds down at Cisco Brewers, something tends to happen to the people who came. “You leave the weekend going, ‘I learned so much,'” Ehrenberg says. “I just feel a little lighter, and a little bit more that we’re gonna be okay. A little bit more hopeful.” He pauses. “And that is not a political statement: I just think everyone says a little bit right now, ‘Oh, what is the world today?’ And after the weekend, you feel a little bit better about it.”

Yes, please.

Nantucket Book Festival takes place from Thursday, June 11 through Sunday, June, 14. Methodist Church and surrounding venues, downtown Nantucket. Most events free; nantucketbookfestival.org.

The complete author roster: