2024
Authors
Authors for the 2024 Cape Cod Book Festival will be announced Labor Day, 2024.
Lois Cahall, founder
Lois Cahall loves books. She has become a singularly successful advocate for authors, editors, and publishers. In 2015 she founded the Palm Beach Book Festival, a 501 c-3 non-profit bringing in New York Times best-selling and celebrity authors. Her reach spans between the world’s most beloved commercial fiction writers to award-winning authors of literary merit.
James Patterson is the Palm Beach Festival’s Honorary Chairman. In 2020 Ms. Cahall was named Creative Director of Development for James Patterson Entertainment (JPE) adapting his novels into films. With his blessing, she’s now turned her direction to her home state of Massachusetts, founding the Cape Cod Book Festival (CCBF.) In Autumn 2024, the CCBF (a 501 c-3 non-profit) will launch with a similar mission of literacy for Cape communities and underserved children.
Ms. Cahall began her writing career as a columnist for Cape Cod newspapers and other local periodicals including Cape Cod Life before spending over a decade writing for women’s, men’s, and food magazines. Her articles have been published in Redbook, Cosmo Girl, Seventeen, SELF, Marie Claire, Ladies Home Journal, Reader’s Digest, Men’s Journal, and Bon Appetit. In the UK she’s written for RED, GQ, Psychologies, and for The Times.
Ms. Cahall’s first novel, Plan C: Just in Case, (Bloomsbury 2012) was a #1 best-seller in the UK. It remained in the top three for e-book fiction on Amazon for that year before selling into international translation markets. Ms. Cahall’s second novel Court of the Myrtles (Bloomsbury) was hailed as “Tuesdays with Morrie on estrogen,” by Ladies Home Journal. Her forthcoming novel is entitled The Many Lives & Loves of Hazel Lavery.
Ms. Cahall divides her life between Cape Cod and New York, although her spiritual home is London. But most importantly, she can twirl the Hula Hoop for an hour non-stop and clear a Thanksgiving table in just under ten minutes. And we won’t even discuss how fast she can shuck an oyster, though she savors her clam chow-dah slowly.
Kwame Alexander
Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, publisher, and New York Times Bestselling author of 36 books, including Swing, Becoming Muhammad Ali, co-authored with James Patterson, Rebound, which was shortlisted for prestigious UK Carnegie Medal, The Caldecott Medal and Newbery Honor-winning picture book, The Undefeated, illustrated by Kadir Nelson, and his Newbery medal-winning middle grade novel, The Crossover. His newest releases are The Door of No Return, book one of a new trilogy that is destined to be a game changer, and An American Story.
A regular contributor to NPR’s Morning Edition, Kwame is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, The Coretta Scott King Author Honor, Three NAACP Image Award Nominations, and the 2017 Inaugural Pat Conroy Legacy Award. In 2018, he opened the Barbara E. Alexander Memorial Library and Health Clinic in Ghana, as a part of LEAP for Ghana, an international literacy program he co-founded. He is the writer and executive producer of The Crossover TV series on Disney+.
Gerald Garnick
Attorney Gerald (Jerry) Garnick is our Cape Cod Book Festival representative. He has raised his family and practiced law on the Cape since 1971. He has now closed his office and committed to travel with his wife and continues to do volunteer work. After a few years of retirement Jerry became ‘Of Council’ with the law firm Princi Mills PC in Hyannis.
Jerry has served as a Trustee on the Cape Symphony for over 40 years. He served as President of the symphony from 2007 to 2009 during their financial crisis, yet the Symphony was able to reach its financial goals. Jerry has been a trustee of the Cape Museum of Arts. On behalf of the Hyannis Film Festival, he has curated film viewings open to the public. He was also on the search committee that brought the present rabbi to the Cape Cod Synagogue, who has served as Rabbi for over 25 years. For the Book Festival, Jerry is both our friend and legal advisor (and also a book lover!)
Author
For the last ten years, Leigh Haber ran Oprah’s Book Club and oversaw all books coverage for her print and digital platforms. Earlier this year, she launched an independent business—Leigh Haber Literary—under which she writes, edits, and consults for entities such as The New York Times, Zibby Media, Girls Write Now, and Equality Now. She was recently named to the board of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction.
Over the course of her career, Haber ran publicity departments for publishers such as Harcourt Brace and Avon Books, and later became a top editor for companies such as Scribner and Hyperion. She has worked with a stellar group of authors ranging from Al Gore to Steve Martin to Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor, to name a few.
