Background information on each author is provided below

CHRIS ADRIAN this year was named one of The New Yorker’s “20 under 40,” identifying young writers worth watching.  An overachiever with eclectic tastes, Chris holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, an M.D. from Eastern Virginia Medical School, and attended Harvard Divinity School. He will talk about his most recently published book, The Great Night, a modern retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which explores the themes of love and death. His previous works include Gob's Grief, an historical surrealist novel in which radical feminist Victoria Woodhull and Walt Whitman collaborate to build a machine capable of undoing death, The Children's Hospital, and A Better Angel, a collection of stories.  Adrian's short stories have been published in The Paris Review, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, McSweeney's, and The New Yorker. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009.  

Geraldine Brooks was born in Australia, lives in West Tisbury with her husband and two sons and, in 2006, won the Pulitzer Prize for her acclaimed novel, March.  She will discuss her recently published book, Caleb's Crossing which focuses on life on Martha's Vineyard in the 1600s and is based on the true story of Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, a Wampanoag and the first Native American to graduate from Harvard in 1665. Her previously published novels include People of the Book, a New York Times bestseller translated into 20 languages, the Pulitzer-winning March, and the international bestseller Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague.  She is also the author of the nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women and Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under. She has worked as a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans.  Geraldine edited The Best American Short Stories 2011, which will be released in October. 

Melissa Coleman, a freelance writer, is the author of This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone. A New York Times bestseller and Indie Next Pick for May 2011, her recently published book, was excerpted in O, The Oprah Magazine, and reviewed in the New York Times and New York Times Book Review, Marie Claire, NPR, Los Angeles Times, and People Magazine. Melissa is a columnist for Maine and Maine Home and Design magazines. Set on a rugged coastal homestead during the 1970s, This Life Is in Your Hands introduces a superb young writer. Coleman's story is both an account of her family's experiment in back-to-the-garden living and a meditation on a childhood that was simultaneously idyllic, magical, baffling, and tragic.

Andre Dubus III, an American novelist and writer of short stories, is a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He is author of The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, Bluesman, House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and, Townie: A Memoir, published this year.  Townie tells of growing up poor in Haverhill after his parents' divorce, street fighting and boxing, and deals extensively with his relationship with his father. House of Sand and Fog was a fiction finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Booksense Book of the Year, and was an Oprah Book Club selection and #1 New York Times bestseller. It has been published in twenty languages and the 2003 film adaptation was nominated for an Academy Award.  He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Magazine Award for fiction, The Pushcart Prize, and was a Finalist for the Rome Prize Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters.

Tom Dunlop, a life-long Island resident, is a former editor of, and contributing writer to Martha’s Vineyard Magazine.  He now spends most of his time in New York City where he works as a film producer. Dunlop’s book, Schooner, Building a Wooden Boat on Martha's Vineyard, takes the reader through the construction of Rebecca of Vineyard Haven, a 60-foot wooden schooner designed and built by one of the few boatyards in the United States devoted exclusively to the design and construction of traditional, plank-on-frame wooden boats--a book of great appeal to craftsmen, boat lovers, and those who love beautiful things made by hand.  Fellow speaker Alison Shaw coordinated with him to provide the extraordinary photographs for this book. He also wrote, Morning Glory Farm and the Family That Feeds An Island. 

Juliet Eilperin, a political and environmental reporter for The Washington Post, will speak about her recently published book, Demon Fish: Travels Through The Hidden World of Sharks, an eye-opening adventure that spans the globe and investigates the way different cultures relate to the ocean’s top predator. Along the way, she reminds us why, after millions of years, sharks remain among riest accused of molesting boys, a high-profile trial that a politically connectenature’s most awe-inspiring creatures. From Belize to South Africa, from Shanghai to Bimini, we see that our obsession with sharks may eventually lead to their extinction. Yet we also see glimpses of how people and sharks can coexist. With a reporter’s instinct for a good story and a scientist’s curiosity, Eilperin offers us a close-up understanding of these extraordinary creatures. She previously published Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives. Eilperin lives in Washington, DC with her husband and two young children.

Linda Fairstein, the internationally best-selling author of over a dozen crime novels featuring Manhattan prosecutor Alexandra Cooper, will speak about her recently published book Silent Mercy. In the new book, a middle of the night call brings Alex and NYPD detectives to Harlem, where the decapitated body of a young woman has been burning on the steps of the Mount Neboh Baptist Church, originally a synagogue until the neighborhood changed. Initially, the authorities suspect a hate crime until another dead woman turns up at a cathedral in Little Italy a few days later. Meanwhile, Alex is prosecuting a defrocked Catholic priest accused of molesting boys, a high-profile trial that a politically connected bishop wants stopped d bishop wants stopped. Fairstein excels at describing New York's complicated religious history as well as the vagaries of the city's legal and religious politics. Fairstein also authored the non-fiction book Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape, based on her experience as head of the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office from 1976 to 2002. She lives with her husband in New York and in Chilmark.

Lisa Genova is a Harvard-trained neuroscientist who lives in Chatham, Massachusetts with her family.  In her second novel, Left Neglected, published this summer, a car crash gives a successful young woman an obscure neurological syndrome called Left Neglect. Until the accident, Sarah and Bob Nickerson live in suburban Massachusetts with their three small children. Both work 60-hour weeks, though the economic downturn looms. But after Sarah has her car accident on the way to work, the doctors inform her of her condition, which causes her brain to ignore the left side of everything, and she begins a long and uncertain recovery. Genova vividly describes Sarah's fear and frustration about a recovery that may never come, turning her struggle into a lesson in forgiveness, acceptance, and adaptability.  Left Neglected became a New York Times bestseller after garnering much critical acclaim. Her award winning first novel, Still Alice, dealt with early-onset Alzheimer's, and was featured in the 2009 Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival. 

Jessica B. Harris is a culinary historian and author of eleven cookbooks on the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora. Most recently, she wrote High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, a history of African foods that traces their entrance into America’s culture and identity. She is a professor at Queens College, CUNY, and a consultant at Dillard University in New Orleans, where she founded the Institute for the Study of Culinary Cultures. She was recently inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America. Harris lives in New York City, New Orleans, and on Martha’s Vineyard.

Alan Heathcock will be speaking about his collection of short (or perhaps medium-length) stories, Volt. The settings of Heathcock’s stories are all in the northern plains states, but the stories are anything but peaceful and serene.  Heathcock’s prose, spare, muscular and poetic, fits the foreboding, God-fearing nature of the stories.  Heathcock’s fiction has been published in many of America’s top magazines and journals. His stories have won the National Magazine Award in fiction, and have been selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories anthology. Volt received starred reviews from Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, was named by Publishers Weekly as a debut to watch for 2011, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, featured as one of three notable debuts to watch in The Huffington Post, selected as a Barnes and Noble Best Book of the Month, as well as for inclusion in the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers series. Heathcock has been awarded fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and is currently a Literature Fellow for the state of Idaho. A native of Chicago, he teaches fiction writing at Boise State University.

Tayari Jones will be speaking about her third book, Silver Sparrow, a novel set in 1980s Atlanta detailing the life of a man and his two daughters with separate women. On the publication of  Silver Sparrow, the Village Voice noted, “Tayari Jones is fast defining middle-class black Atlanta the way Cheever did Westchester.” Jones won the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction for her first work, Leaving Atlanta. She is currently a member of the faculty in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the Newark Campus of Rutgers University, and she will spend the 2011-12 academic year at Harvard University as a Radcliffe Institute Fellow researching her fourth novel.

Ward Just, Vineyard resident and author of 15 novels, will be speaking about his new book Rodin’s Debutante. Set in mid-20^th century Chicago, the novel details the high school and family life of Lee Goodell, and how his world changes after a sex crime at his school. Just’s previous works have spanned multiple genres, with a frequent focus on politics.  Just began his career as a correspondent for Newsweek and the Washington Post from 1959 to 1969. His 1997 book Echo House was a finalist for the National Book Award, and his 2004 book An Unfinished Season – also a coming-of-age story set in Chicago – was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.



Kostya Kennedy is a senior editor at Sports Illustrated, where his writing and editing span multiple sports and subjects. He will be speaking about his first book, 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports, released in late 2010 to critical acclaim. Kennedy’s reporting in 56 provides enlightening insight into Joe DiMaggio’s legendary 56-game hitting streak in 1941, one of the few remaining milestones from an earlier era of baseball that is yet to be eclipsed. Kennedy earned an M.S. and received a Pulitzer Fellowship from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, after which he was a staff writer at Newsday and a contributor to the New York Times and the New Yorker. He currently lives with his wife and children in New York City.

Siddhartha Mukherjee made waves this year with his first book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Beginning in ancient Egypt, it provides a definitive history of cancer diagnosis and treatment until the present day. It was listed in “The 10 Best Books of 2010” by the New York Times, “Top 10 Nonfiction Books” by Time, and “Top 10 Books of 2010” by O: The Oprah Magazine. Further, Time placed Dr. Mukherjee on its list of “100 Most Influential People.” Hailing from New Delhi, India, Dr. Mukherjee studied on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University after earning his undergraduate degree at Stanford University. He then obtained his MD from Harvard Medical School. He is currently an Assistant Professor of oncology at Columbia University, and he is a staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Center.  Dr. Mukherjee lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.

Joan Nathan is a celebrated cookbook author, specializing in Jewish and Israeli cuisine. In her latest book, Quiches, Kugels and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France, Nathan “applies her culinary detective skills to sniffing out the Jewish influence on French cuisine,” according to a Publishers Weekly Starred Review. The recipes are, to those familiar with Jewish cooking, a mix of the familiar and the adventurous, with interesting anthropological discoveries dotting the pages. Nathan’s previous books have earned her critical acclaim, with three of her books winning James Beard Awards and her 1994 book Jewish Cooking in America winning the Julia Child Cookbook Award in the American Category. She was also executive producer and host of the 1998-9 PBS series Jewish Cooking in America with Joan Nathan. Nathan lives in Washington, DC and spends her summers in Chilmark.

Edith Pearlman, a renowned author of short stories, has just been selected to receive the PEN/Malamud Award honoring “excellence in the art of the short story.”   She will be speaking about her newest collection, Binocular Vision. These stories, a mix of previously published and new work, explore characters male and female, young and old, from South America to the northeast United States, and from the early 20^th century to the present day. The stories’ common threads are their interesting characters, as well as their complex but succinct language.  She has also written non-fiction features for, among others, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Smithsonian Magazine. Pearlman lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with her husband.

Kitty Pilgrim, fresh off a career change from news anchor to novelist, will be speaking about her debut book, The Explorer’s Code. A true thriller, it follows oceanographer Cordelia Stapleton on an international adventure for a precious land deed, an adventure that connects the turn of the 20^th century to the present day. Prior to signing a book deal with Scribner, Pilgrim worked at CNN for 24 years. Beginning as a production assistant in 1996, she worked her way up to correspondent and anchor. Throughout her career, she hosted Early Edition, CNN Newsroom, Your Money, and CNN Headline News. She is also a member on the Council of Foreign Relations. Ms. Pilgrim lives in New York.

Charles Rappleye’s most recent book, Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution, chronicles the life of an important but often forgotten contributor to the founding of the United States. Rappleye’s book shows how Morris (1734-1806) was a key contributor to the American Revolution as a banker and creditor for the newly forming American government, despite the fact that his legacy was later tarnished by his numerous political enemies and the debtor status in which he ended his life. Rappleye also wrote Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution, which was named the best book of 2006 by the American Revolution Round Table. In addition to his historical work, Rappleye and his wife Tulsa Kinney, who live in Los Angeles, founded the art magazine Artillery.

Steven Rattner, former “car czar” in the Obama administration, will be speaking about his book Overhaul: An Insider’s Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry. In February 2009, Rattner was appointed Lead Auto Adviser to head up the controlled bankruptcy and restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler. By July of that year, both companies had emerged from bankruptcy, and they are now once again on the path to renewed profitability. Overhaul details the tense moments and difficult decisions involved in the process of this restructuring. Before joining the Obama administration, Rattner was a private equity investor, most notably at Quadrangle Group, of which he was cofounder. He is now an advisor to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a contributor to the Financial Times, and an analyst for MSNBC’s Morning Joe. He lives in New York City and Martha's Vineyard.

Alison Shaw, legendary Vineyard photographer and experienced speaker at the Book Festival, will be speaking about Photographing Martha’s Vineyard: Where to Find Perfect Shots and How to Take Them. More than another collection of photos, this book will serve as a reference guide for Vineyard photographers for years to come, with advice on location, timing, and camera settings. Represented twice in the book festival this year, her photographs are also featured in the book, Schooner with Tom Dunlop.  Shaw originally moved to the island in 1975 after graduating from Smith College and took a job at the Vineyard Gazette, where she worked as a staff photographer and graphic designer for nearly 25 years. She has won the New England Press Association’s Photographer of the Year award four times. Shaw’s gallery is located in the Oak Bluffs Art District, and she lives in Oak Bluffs with her family.

Alexandra Styron, originally a novelist, ventures into the realm of nonfiction with her latest work, Reading My Father: A Memoir. Astute readers will recognize Styron’s name and immediately think back to her father, William Styron, the famously conflicted novelist who wrote Darkness Visible. And Reading My Father is a complicated but empathetic explanation, or apology in the classical sense, for her father’s life, including his lifelong bout with depression. Styron, a graduate of Barnard College and the Master of Fine Arts program at Columbia University, has also contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Real Simple, among other publications. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.

Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein co-wrote Engines of Innovation: The Entrepreneurial University in the Twenty-First Century, which provides a compelling argument that research universities must take the lead in effecting societal change. Universities must use their intellectual and financial resources, they argue, to confront global issues such as climate change, poverty, childhood diseases, and an impending worldwide shortage of clean water. Thorp and Goldstein are uniquely qualified to make such an argument given their research and roles at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). Thorp is a renowned academic chemist and co-founded two biotechnology companies, Alderaan Diagnostics (later Xanthon, Inc.) and Viamet Pharmaceuticals; he is now the chancellor of UNC. Goldstein, currently the University Entrepreneur in Residence at UNC, is an entrepreneur who founded numerous successful companies. All royalties from Engines of Innovation have been assigned by the authors to UNC to support innovation and entrepreneurship.

Amor Towles is an investment banker turned novelist, with his debut novel being released on July 26 to much critical acclaim. Rules of Civility, set in 1938 Manhattan, follows the 25^th year of Katey Kontent’s life as she turns from Wall Street secretary to New York socialite. As the Amazon.com review states, “Elegant and captivating, Rules of Civility turns a Jamesian eye on how spur of the moment decisions define life for decades to come. A love letter to a great American city at the end of the Depression, readers will quickly fall under its spell of crisp writing, sparkling atmosphere and breathtaking revelations.” Though Towles may be an investment banker by trade, he has long had a history with writing, as he received both a B.A. from Yale and an M.A. from Stanford in English. He maintains his job as a principal at an investment firm in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and children. He also grew up spending his summers in West Chop on Martha's Vineyard.

Isabel Wilkerson, celebrated journalist, will be speaking about her first book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. After attending Howard University, where she was editor-in-chief of college newspaper The Hilltop, Wilkerson worked her way up to become Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times. While there, she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 1994, winning it for her coverage of the 1993 floods throughout the Midwest. She has served as a journalism professor at Emory University and Princeton University, and currently at Boston University. Wilkerson spent 14 years researching and writing The Warmth of Other Suns, a fascinating account of the movement of black Americans out of the South and into cities in the Northeast, Midwest, and West throughout the middle of the 20^th century. It won the renowned National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as being included on numerous prestigious top-10 of 2010 book lists and becoming a New York Times bestseller.

Prepared by Susan Eckstein and Eben Lazarus