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Alice Hoffman: The Fun of the Festival

May 1, 2016 by Nantucket Book Festival

As a featured author of the Nantucket Book Festival every year since 2013, Alice Hoffman is an audience favorite, with one of the most anticipated presentations of the weekend. This year Alice will join friend and fellow author Ann Leary for a Friday morning breakfast event at the Atheneum to officially open the 2016 Book Festival.

(Insider tip: tickets are going fast! To buy yours before they’re gone, visit http://nantucketbookfestival.org/festival-info/schedule/alice-hoffman-ann-leary-family-ties/)

Since publishing her first novel at the age of 21, Alice has written more than 30 works of fiction, including The Marriage of Opposites, The Red Garden, The Museum of Extraordinary Things, and The Dovekeepers. Alice’s 1995 novel Practical Magic was made into a Warner film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman; later, Here on Earth (1997), Alice’s modern reworking of some of the themes of Emily Bronte’s masterpiece Wuthering Heights, became an Oprah’s Book Club selection.

Photos: Alice Hoffman at 2014 Book Festival, photo credit Tim Ehrenberg; Alice with Book Festival sponsor Jill Karp in 2015

Alice’s own experience with treatment for breast cancer at Mt. Auburn Hospital was her motivation to help establish the Hoffman Breast Center in Cambridge, MA, and her advance from Local Girls, a collection of inter-related fictions about love and loss on Long Island, was donated to help create the Center. On May 16, Alice and friends including Jodi Picoult, Anita Diamant, Lisa Genova, Lily King, Ann Leary, and Elizabeth Strout will present “Pink Pages” at the American Repertory Theater to benefit the Hoffman Breast Center. Tickets are available at https://donate.mountauburnhospital.org/PinkPagesTickets.

As she anticipates her fourth appearance at the Nantucket Book Festival, we asked Alice what she’d like to say to her fans:

“The Nantucket Book Festival is the most fun you can have during the summer. I love the writers who are going to be there this year - it is such an exciting lineup and I can't wait to hear them all! Diane Ackerman is fantastic. Ann Leary is a wonderful writer and I've read her new book The Children, which I loved. I'm a huge fan of Geraldine Brooks's work, love Billy Collins, and think Sebastian Junger is one of our best nonfiction writers. What could be better! I can't wait to be on Nantucket.”

We hope you can’t wait as well!