The Cape Cod Book Festival is poised to bring storytellers and book lovers together for an inspired weekend of reading and signings.

Author and founder of The Cape Cod Book Festival (CCBF) Lois Cahall shares, “I believe in this festival—a new cultural footprint in Massachusetts for both locals and washashores, for charitably minded readers and for those who enjoy rubbing elbows with great thinkers. These are people with New England sensibilities. My kind of people. Our kind of people. And for someone that has lived and traveled all over the world, I can tell you that Cape Cod is that rare kind of place that somehow moves forward by simply standing still.”

Cahall is no stranger to the endeavor of bringing the written word to the masses—she pioneered The Palm Beach Book Festival which is now in its 10th successful year. As someone who fell in love with the Cape as a result of spending her childhood summers in Harwich Port, then later sharing that same magic with her own children, she considers Barnstable her personal epicenter and the place where she feels most at home. 

It gnawed at her, however, that there wasn’t a book festival here in this place that she loved so thoroughly. So when Rory Kennedy said to her in an email, “If anyone should do it, it should be you!,”  Cahall set out to establish The Cape Cod Book Festival as a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization. She personally curates a theme that ties each author together. This year’s focus is love because as Cahall says, “We could all use a little bit more of that.”