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. Her memoir, Memorial Days, will be published in February 2025.
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. She partnered with Katie Couric to executive produce Fed Up, and she executive produced The Biggest Little Farm, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award. She is 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 Senior Vice President and Publisher of 37 Ink, an imprint of Simon and Schuster. She was the Poets & Writers 2019 Editor of the Year. She has edited many prizewinning and New York Times bestselling books including one of the 2023 New York Times’s 10 Best Books of the Year, Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo. In 2020, Davis was named Editor in Chief of the Condé Nast magazines, Bon Appétit and Epicurious. She returned to Simon & Schuster in 2023.
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. 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 12 cookbooks including her latest work, My Life in Recipes: Food, Family, and Memories. Her 2018 book, King Solomon’s Table won the IACP International Cookbook of the Year. Her book, Jewish Cooking in America, was named an IACP classic and in 1994 won both the James Beard Award and the IACP/Julia Child Cookbook of the Year Award. Nathan is a regular contributor to The New York Times and Tablet Magazine. She serves on the board of the DC based organization, Martha’s Table and was recently honored for her work for the organization on Sunday Night Suppers, an annual fundraising event chaired by Nathan, Alice Waters and Jose Andres.
Michele Norris
Michele Norris is one of America’s most trusted voices in journalism, earning several honors over her career, including Peabody, Emmy, Dupont, and Goldsmith awards. She is a columnist for The Washington Post Opinion Section, the host of the Audible Podcast, Your Mama’s Kitchen, and from 2002 to 2012 she was a cohost of NPR’s All Things Considered. Norris is the founding director of The Race Card Project, a Peabody Award–winning narrative archive where people share their reflections on identity—in just six words. Her recent book, Our Hidden Conversations offers a transformative dialogue on race and identity in America based on her decade-long work at The Race Card Project. Her first book was a memoir, The Grace of Silence.
Barbara Y. Phillips
Barbara Y. Phillips is a social justice activist, scholar and writer. She was an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law and a civil rights litigator specializing in voting rights as partner at a law firm and as staff attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She is on the board of directors of the Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights and has served on the boards of other organizations devoted to women’s rights, voting rights, economic development and social justice. Her publications include The Legacy of Other Social Justice Movements and The Trojan Horse Called “Diversity.”
Valerie Rosenberg
Valerie Rosenberg is a new member of the Advisory Board and was formerly the Chief Operating Office of the Martha’s Vineyard 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.
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.