Our Advisory Board

The MVBF Advisory Board advises and guides the MV Book Festival and Author Series.
Its distinguished members provide invaluable guidance on upcoming titles, author selection, and programming, and participate in the programming and moderate discussions. 

  • New York Times-bestselling author Geraldine Brooks writes impeccably researched historical novels. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for her novel, March. Other novels include Caleb’s Crossing, The Secret Chord, Year of Wonders and People of the Book, as well as non-fiction works. Her most recent novel, Horse is based on a real-life racehorse named Lexington, one of the most famous thoroughbreds in American history, and was published in 2022. Her memoir, Memorial Days, was published in February 2025.

  • Dawn Davis is Senior Vice President and Publisher of 37 Ink, an imprint of Simon and Schuster. She was the Poets & Writers 2019 Editor of the Year. She has edited many prizewinning and New York Times bestselling books including one of the 2023 New York Times’s 10 Best Books of the Year, Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo. In 2020, Davis was named Editor in Chief of the Condé Nast magazines, Bon Appétit and Epicurious. She returned to Simon & Schuster in 2023.

  • Ron Charles writes about books and publishing. He was a book critic for The Washington Post for 20 years. For a dozen years, he enjoyed teaching American literature and critical theory in the Midwest. Before moving to Washington DC, he edited the books section of the Christian Science Monitor in Boston. His wife is an English teacher and the cinematographer of their satirical series, “The Totally Hip Video Book Review." He was one of three jurors for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.

  • Buck Goldstein is the University Entrepreneur in Residence and Professor of the Practice in the Department of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He co-authored, with Holden Thorp, Engines of Innovation—The Entrepreneurial University in the 21st Century. He is the co-founder of Information America, an online information business that was acquired by the Thomson Corporation. He also founded NetWorth Partners, a venture capital fund focusing on information based enterprises.

  • Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Emmy, DuPont, and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has published numerous books and produced and hosted an array of documentary films, including The Black Church (PBS), Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches (HBO), Gospel (PBS), and Great Migrations (PBS). Finding Your Roots, Gates’s groundbreaking genealogy and genetics series, now in its eleventh season on PBS, was nominated for a Primetime Emmy (2024).  His latest book is The Black Box: Writing the Race (Penguin Random House, 2024). He is at work on a new series exploring “The History of Blacks and Jews.”

  • Barbara Y. Phillips is a social justice activist, scholar and writer. She was an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law and a civil rights litigator specializing in voting rights as partner at a law firm and as staff attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.  She is on the board of directors of the Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights and has served on the boards of other organizations devoted to women’s rights, voting rights, economic development and social justice. Her publications include The Legacy of Other Social Justice Movements and The Trojan Horse Called “Diversity.”  

Alexandra Styron

  • Alexandra Styron is the author of the memoir, Reading My Father, and the novel, All the Finest Girls. Her latest book, Steal this Country: A Handbook for Resistance, Persistence and Fixing Almost Everything, is a timely call for citizen activism and was released in September 2018.  She teaches memoir writing in the MFA program at Hunter College. In Reading My Father, Styron provides a compelling look at the experiences that shaped her father, William Styron’s life and his novels.

  • Laurie David is an author, producer, and environmental advocate. She executive produced the Academy Award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, featuring Al Gore. She partnered with Katie Couric to executive produce Fed Up, and she executive produced The Biggest Little Farm, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award. She is a trustee on the Natural Resources Defense Council and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Children's Nature Institute. She has written four books including The Family Cooks, The Family Dinner, and The Down to Earth Guide to Global Warming.

  • Michele Norris is one of America’s most trusted voices in journalism, earning several honors over her career, including Peabody, Emmy, Dupont, and Goldsmith awards. She is a columnist for The Washington Post Opinion Section, the host of the Audible Podcast, Your Mama’s Kitchen, and from 2002 to 2012 she was a cohost of NPR’s All Things Considered. Norris is the founding director of The Race Card Project, a Peabody Award–winning narrative archive where people share their reflections on identity—in just six words. Her recent book, Our Hidden Conversations offers a transformative dialogue on race and identity in America based on her decade-long work at The Race Card Project. Her first book was a memoir, The Grace of Silence.

  • George Gibson joined Grove Atlantic as the Executive Editor in January 2017. Gibson was at Bloomsbury for 23 years where he edited and/or published a number of acclaimed works of nonfiction, including Dava Sobel’s Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, Mark Kurlansky’s Salt, and Carol Anderson’s White Rage.  Gibson began his career in the book business in 1972 as a clerk at The Old Corner Bookstore in Boston, which was then the oldest continuously running bookstore in America. 

  • Jessica B. Harris is the author, editor, and translator of seventeen books, including twelve cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African diaspora. Her IACP Award–winning book High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America has been adapted into a Netflix series. Harris is a professor emerita at Queens College/CUNY in New York and has written extensively for scholarly and popular publications. She served as the culinary consultant for the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture and their lauded restaurant, the Sweet Home Café. She holds lifetime achievement awards from the Southern Foodways Alliance, the Soul Summit, and the James Beard Foundation, which also inducted Harris into the Cookbook Hall of Fame.

Photo by: Elena Seibert

  • Richard Russo is the author of eight novels, two short story collections and the memoir, Elsewhere. In 2002, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls. He is a master of rich characters and pitch-perfect descriptions of small-town America. His eighth novel, Chances Are…, was set on Martha’s Vineyard. Somebody’s Fool was published in July 2023 and returns to North Bath, in upstate New York, and to the characters of his beloved best sellers Nobody’s Fool and Everybody’s Fool. His book Straight Man in 2023 was developed into the comedy television series Lucky Hank with Bob Odenkirk. His new novel, After the Falls, will be published in August 2026.

  • Joan Nathan is the author of 12 cookbooks including her latest work, My Life in Recipes: Food, Family, and Memories. Her 2018 book, King Solomon’s Table won the IACP International Cookbook of the Year. Her book, Jewish Cooking in America, was named an IACP classic and in 1994 won both the James Beard Award and the IACP/Julia Child Cookbook of the Year Award. Nathan is a regular contributor to The New York Times and Tablet Magazine. She serves on the board of the DC based organization, Martha’s Table and was recently honored for her work for the organization on Sunday Night Suppers, an annual fundraising event chaired by Nathan, Alice Waters and Jose Andres.