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Mission & Vision

Our Mission

The NBF celebrates the transformative power of words to inspire, illuminate, educate, and to connect us to each other through our shared humanity.

We are building a community of readers and writers on and beyond Nantucket.


Our Vision

Do you remember when you learned to read?

Do you remember your excitement when you first fell in love with a book, the characters who made you smile, who helped you dream, who gave you courage?

We remember, too, we volunteers and staff of the Nantucket Book Foundation. It is those memories of delight and wonder that fuel us to bring that same experience to our audiences both young and old. We believe that reading is key to a life of curiosity and imagination, a wider view of the world and all its peoples, and a way to understand others different from ourselves, so that we may come closer together, to make life richer and better for all.

These ideas are the bedrock upon which we built the Nantucket Book Foundation, and that mission remains the same today. That and making certain that our audiences, both at the Festival and in our schools and community, have a great experience!

The Nantucket Book Festival is a multi-day cultural event celebrating the rich literary resources of Nantucket’s past, present and future. The Festival seeks to create and renew enthusiasm for books, connect authors and readers, encourage a love of reading and writing among young people, raise funds for literary causes, and promote Nantucket Island as an oasis and haven for the literary arts.

“The most significant part of our work is not the celebration of the written word, but the heights to which those words serve to elevate the thinking lives of our audiences. We are changing perspectives and hopefully changing lives by bringing in the prism and perspective of some of the finest minds in the literary world.” Annye Camara, Board Director and Past-President, Nantucket Book Foundation