ABOUT:
Our Team
Lois Cahall
Founder & Board of Directors
Lois Cahall loves books. She has become a singularly successful advocate for authors and publishers. In 2015 she founded the Palm Beach Book Festival, bringing in New York Times best-selling and celebrity authors. Her reach spans from 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.
Stacy Schiff
Board of Directors
A Pulitzer Prize-winner, Stacy Schiff is the author, most recently, of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, hailed as “enthralling” by The New York Times, a “tour de force” by The Wall Street Journal, “superb” by NPR, and as “wildly entertaining” by The New Yorker. The Revolutionary appeared on most 2022 best-of lists, including The Wall Street Journal’s Top Ten Books of the Year and President Obama’s “Favorite Books of 2022.”
Schiff is the author as well of The Witches: Salem, 1692, which The New York Times hailed as “an almost novelistic, thriller-like narrative.” David McCullough declared the book “brilliant from start to finish.” Schiff’s previous book, Cleopatra: A Life, was published to great acclaim in 2010. Simon Winchester predicted “it will become a classic.” Ron Chernow may explain why: “Even if forced to at gunpoint, Stacy Schiff would be incapable of writing a dull page or a lame sentence.” Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Brad Gooch has called her “perhaps the most seductive writer of nonfiction prose in America in our time.”
Schiff’s other titles include Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize, the Ambassador Award in American Studies, and the Gilbert Chinard Prize of the Institut Français d’Amérique. All three were New York Times Notable Books; the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the Chicago Tribune, and The Economist also named A Great Improvisation a Best Book of the Year. Michael Douglas stars in Franklin, an eight-part Apple TV+ series based on A Great Improvisation.
Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and was a Director’s Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Among other honors, she was named a 2011 Library Lion by the New York Public Library, a Boston Public Library Literary Light in 2016, and in 2017 received the Lifetime Achievement Award in History and Biography from the New England Historic Genealogical Society. In 2018 she was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. Awarded a 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she was inducted into the Academy in 2019.
Schiff has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Los Angeles Times, among many other publications. She lives in New York City.
Board of Advisors
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+.
John Buffalo Mailer
John Buffalo Mailer is an award-winning screenwriter, journalist, playwright, actor, and producer. He is currently Creative Director for Mailer Tuchman Media, a development and production company based out of New York.
In October of 2000 he founded Back House Productions in New York City with Thomas Kail (Director of Hamilton), Anthony Veneziale (Creator of Freestyle Love Supreme), and Neil Stewart. Back House became the 1st resident theater company of The Drama Bookshop’s Arthur Seelan Theater in 2001, where they developed plays by Beau Willimon (House Of Cards), Sam Forman (Station 19), Anne Nelson (The Guys), the 2008 TONY Award Winner for Best Musical, In The Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Buffalo’s first play, Hello Herman, which premiered in New York in 2002 and was subsequently adapted into a movie directed by Michelle Danner and starring Norman Reedus in 2012.
As a writer, actor, and producer, Buffalo has made over 20 movies, is currently developing a series based on his father Norman Mailer’s life with Director James Gray (Ad Astra, The Lost City of Z, Little Odessa).
As an actor, he grew up at The Actors Studio and was in his first play by the age of twelve, performing in dozens of plays in New York, including the notorious 2011 revival of Dracula starring Thora Birch (American Beauty, Ghost World). That same year he appeared opposite Shia LaBeouf in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and has had the honor of acting opposite Paul Giamatti and Ellen Burstyn Alec Baldwin, Demi Moore, and many others.
Buffalo can most recently be seen playing opposite Luke Wilson, Abigail Breslin, Andy Garcia, Donald Sutherland, Ryan Phillipe, and Kyle MacLachlan in Miranda’s Victim which premiered at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in 2023 and is being released by Vertical in 2024.
Leigh Haber
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.
Sebastian Junger
Sebastian Junger is the New York Times bestselling author of In My Time of Dying, Tribe, War, Freedom, A Death in Belmont, Fire, and The Perfect Storm, and codirector of the documentary film Restrepo, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He is also the winner of a Peabody Award and the National Magazine Award for Reporting. Visit: sebastianjunger.com.
Jacquelyn Mitchard
Jacquelyn Mitchard is the New York Times bestselling author of 23 novels for adults and teenagers, and the recipient of Great Britain’s Talkabout prize, The Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards, and named to the short list for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, with more than 3 million copies in print in 34 languages. It was later adapted into a major feature film starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Her novel Still Summer has also been adapted for a film still in production and her teen trilogy The Midnight Twins, is in development for a limited series by Kaleidoscope Entertainment. Her essay collection, The Rest of Us: Dispatches from the Mother Ship, was drawn from her newspaper column syndicated by Tribune Media. Mitchard’s essays also have been published in magazines worldwide, widely anthologized, and incorporated into school curricula. She served on the Fiction jury for the 2003 National Book Awards and was editor-in-chief of Merit Press, a Young Adult imprint under the aegis of Simon and Schuster.
A Chicago native, Mitchard grew up the daughter of a plumber and a hardware store clerk who met as rodeo riders. She is a Distinguished Fellow at the Ragdale Foundation and a DeWitt Clinton Readers Digest Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. She has taught in MFA program for Creative Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Miami University of Ohio and Western New England University and was a speechwriter for former U.S. Rep. and Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala. An avid Italian cook, she lives on Cape Cod with her husband and their nine children. Her newest novel, A Very Inconvenient Scandal, the story of Frankie Attleboro, an acclaimed young underwater photographer reeling from her mother’s shocking death, whose famous marine biologist father shatters the family by marrying Frankie’s best friend, is out from Mira/Harper Collins.
Imani Perry
Imani Perry is a Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor, Harvard Radcliffe Institute; and Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Perry is a scholar of law, literature, and cultural studies and an author of creative nonfiction. Her writing and scholarship primarily focus on the history of Black thought, art, and imagination crafted in response to, and in resistance against, the social, political, and legal realities of domination in the West. Her most recent book, South to America: A Journey below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (Ecco, 2022), won the 2022 National Book Award for nonfiction and was a New York Times best seller. She is a 2023 MacArthur Fellows. Perry’s other award-winning books include Breathe: A Letter to My Sons (Beacon Press, 2019); Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry (Beacon Press, 2018); and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem (University of North Carolina Press, 2018).
Perry served most recently as the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies and a faculty associate with the Programs in Law and Public Affairs, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Jazz Studies at Princeton University. She earned her PhD in American studies from Harvard University, a JD from Harvard Law School, an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center, and a BA from Yale College in literature and American studies.
Edith Vonnegut
Edith “Edie” Vonnegut is the eldest daughter of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Jane Cox. She was born in Schenectady, New York, and raised in Barnstable, Massachusetts. She works as a painter and has exhibited in galleries across the United States. She wrote and illustrated the book Domestic Goddess. She has served as a contributing editor to The New York Times, Playboy, and the Franklin Mint. She lives in the barn behind the house she grew up in, along with her husband, John Squibb. She has two sons and is a grandmother.
Friends of the festival
Gerald Garnick
Festival Representative
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!)
Carisa Hays
Public Relations
Carisa established her own PR firm, Carisa Hays Public Relations, in 2023. A long-time publishing executive, she has held publicity director positions at the Crown Publishing Group, Free Press/Simon & Schuster, Inc., Dell/Delacorte & The Dial Press, and Putnam.
Carisa has planned and executed publicity campaigns for books by Michelle Obama, Barack Obama and George W. Bush and journalists Peter Bergen, James Risen, and Charles Krauthammer. She has also worked with prominent novelists including Kurt Vonnegut, Judy Blume, and Alice Hoffman.
In addition to her years as a publicity director, Carisa was also director of the Random House Speakers Bureau where she managed the bureau and arranged speaking engagements for a select group of bestselling authors, including Taylor Jenkins Reid, Sheri Fink, Amanda Lucidon, and Shaka Senghor.
Carisa is a passionate book lover and champion of authors, booksellers, librarians, and literacy organizations. She and her family have spent almost every summer on the Cape since 1996 exploring its beautiful beaches, attending Cape Cod Baseball League games, going to the movies at the Wellfleet Drive-in, and visiting many of its wonderful bookstores and libraries (yay to the CLAMS library card).
OUR VENUE
David Kuehn
Executive Director of Cotuit Center for the Arts
David Kuehn arrived at Cotuit Center for the Arts in March of 2010 ready, as new executive director, to spearhead an initiative to introduce new patrons to one of the Cape’s undiscovered gems. Today the 7.5 acre campus is bursting with activity in visual and performing arts and education programs.
“To be here is to have a love affair with the arts. It’s a place where you are surrounded by beauty. It’s a place where artistic expression is celebrated. It’s a place where diversity and experimentation are encouraged. It’s a place to feed your soul.”
A native of Indiana, he left the heartland in 1979 for the California gold coast and a degree in music performance from UCLA. His passion for and experience in all art forms was rooted during his early days in California where he played in Daniel Lentz’ ensemble. In Los Angeles, Kuehn worked in the scene with such visionaries as Philip Glass, John Adams, The Kronos Quartet, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Dan Flavin, Franco Assetto and more. In 1993 he relocated to NYC, eventually running the classical music division of RCA records, guiding recording projects by such luminaries as Leontyne Price, Van Cliburn, Michael Tilson Thomas, Denyce Graves, Max Vengerov and the Boston Pops, just to name a few.
Kuehn and his husband Alan Trugman took up seasonal residence on the Cape in 1993 and then permanent residency in their Yarmouth Port home in 2000. He is a former Chairman of the GALE fund, sits on the board of the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network, is a teaching Fellow for the Institute for Nonprofit Practice, has volunteered for several organizations on the Cape and is an avid cyclist.
