Advisory Board
The Advisory Board advises and guides the MV Book Festival and Author Series.
Its distinguished members provide invaluable guidance on upcoming titles, author selection, and programming, and participate in the programming and moderate discussions.
Photo by: Randi Baird
Geraldine Brooks
New York Times-bestselling author Geraldine Brooks writes impeccably researched historical novels. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for her novel, March. Other novels include Caleb’s Crossing, The Secret Chord, Year of Wonders and People of the Book, as well as non-fiction works. Her most recent novel, HORSE is based on a real-life racehorse named Lexington, one of the most famous thoroughbreds in American history, and was published in 2022.
Laurie David
Laurie David is an author, producer, and environmental advocate. She executive produced the Academy Award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, featuring Al Gore, which alerted the world to the climate crisis. She partnered with Katie Couric to executive produce Fed Up, a film about the causes of obesity in the U.S., and most recently she executive produced The Biggest Little Farm, which has been shortlisted for an Academy Award. She serves as a trustee on the Natural Resources Defense Council and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Children's Nature Institute. She has written four books including The Family Cooks, The Family Dinner, and The Down to Earth Guide to Global Warming.
Dawn Davis
Dawn Davis is the Editor in Chief of Bon Appétit. Until November 2020, she was vice president at Simon & Schuster, where she founded and led 37 Ink, an imprint dedicated to sharing stories from marginalized communities. In her role at Simon & Schuster, Davis launched Inkwell Book Club, a national online book club celebrating Black authors. Davis was previously the publisher of HarperCollins imprint Amistad Press, which is “devoted to multicultural voices.” There she oversaw the publication of successful works including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Known World, by Edward P. Jones.
Steve Fischer
Steve Fischer is the former Executive Director on the New England Independent Booksellers Association (NEIBA) which he ran for 12 years. NEIBA’s mission is to further the success of professional independent booksellers in New England to foster a vital and supportive bookselling community.
George Gibson
George Gibson joined Grove Atlantic as the Executive Editor in January 2017. Gibson was at Bloomsbury for 23 years where he edited and/or published a number of acclaimed works of nonfiction, including Dava Sobel’s Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, Mark Kurlansky’s Salt, and Carol Anderson’s White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. Gibson began his career in the book business in 1972 as a clerk at The Old Corner Bookstore in Boston, which was then the oldest continuously running bookstore in America.
Buck Goldstein
Buck Goldstein is the University Entrepreneur in Residence and Professor of the Practice in the Department of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He co-authored, with Holden Thorp, Engines of Innovation—The Entrepreneurial University in the 21st Century. He is the co-founder of Information America, an online information business that was acquired by the Thomson Corporation. He also founded NetWorth Partners, a venture capital fund focusing on information based enterprises.
Jessica B. Harris
Jessica B. Harris is the author of twelve critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora. Among her many contributions to the food industry, Harris has written extensively about the ways in which the African diaspora has influenced cooking in the United States, with books including Sky Juice and Flying Fish: Traditional Caribbean Cooking, High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from African to America, and Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa’s Gifts to New World Cooking. She was the recipient of the 2020 James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award and Humanitarian of the Year.
Joan Nathan
Joan Nathan is the author of eleven cookbooks including her recently released, King Solomon's Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World, which just won an IACP award. Her recent Quiches, Kugels and Couscous was named one of the 10 best cookbooks in 2010 by NPR, Food and Wine and Bon Appétit magazines. Her renowned, Jewish Cooking in America won the James Beard Award for the best American cookbook and, in 2017, was named a “Culinary Classic” by the IACP.
Michele Norris
Michele Norris is a Peabody Award-winning journalist, founder of The Race Card Project, and executive director of the Bridge, the Aspen Institute’s program on race, identity, connectivity, and inclusion. For over a decade, Norris served as a host of NPR’s “All Things Considered.” She has produced in-depth profiles, interviews, and series for NPR News programs, as well as special reports for National Geographic, Time Magazine, and ABC News. Her 2010 memoir, The Grace of Silence, sheds new light on America’s complicated racial history.
Valerie Rosenberg
Valerie Rosenberg is a new member of the Advisory Board and was formerly the Chief Operating Office of the Book Festival. She is a Community Volunteer with Boston Cares, and board member and Treasurer of the Boston Book Festival. Valerie brings decades of consulting work and non-profit experience to the Martha's Vineyard Book Festival. She is an avid reader, and she and her family live in Cambridge and are seasonal residents of Aquinnah.
Photo by: Elena Seibert
Richard Russo
Richard Russo is the author of eight novels, two short story collections and the memoir, Elsewhere. In 2002, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls. He is a master of rich characters and pitch-perfect descriptions of small-town America. His eighth novel, Chances Are…, was set on Martha’s Vineyard. His new novel, Somebody’s Fool, will be published in July 2023 and returns to North Bath, in upstate New York, and to the characters of his beloved best sellers Nobody’s Fool and Everybody’s Fool. His book Straight Man in 2023 was developed into the comedy television series Lucky Hank with Bob Odenkirk.
Sharon Shaloo
Sharon Shaloo is the Executive Director of Massachusetts Center for the Book, which sponsors programming to connect readers with books. Its mission is to promote interest in reading as a cultural activity and support the literary economy of Massachusetts.
Photo by: Rex Bonomelli
Alexandra Styron
Alexandra Styron is the author of the memoir, Reading My Father, and the novel, All the Finest Girls. Her latest book, Steal this Country: A Handbook for Resistance, Persistence and Fixing Almost Everything, is a timely call for citizen activism and was released in September 2018. She teaches memoir writing in the MFA program at Hunter College. In Reading My Father, Styron provides a compelling look at the experiences that shaped her father, William Styron’s life and his novels.
Patricia A. Sullivan
Patricia Sullivan is a professor of history at the University of South Carolina where she specializes in modern US history. Her particular areas of interest are African American history; race, reform and politics in the US; the South since the Civil War; and the history of the Civil Rights Movement. Her new book, Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White will be published in June 2021. Her other books include Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era and Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years.