Nantucket Poetry Festival: 2026 Poets
Melissa Cundieff
Melissa Cundieff is a poet and author of Darling Nova, winner of the 2017 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University's MFA program, where she was a recipient of an Academy of American Poetry Prize. Melissa's second collection of poems, We Came to See What We Saw, circles her father's decline from Alzheimer's, and poems from this manuscript have been published in The Atlantic, Beloit Poetry Journal, Adroit Journal, among other places. Originally from Texas, Melissa lives in Massachusetts and is a lecturer of creative writing at Harvard University.
Related Events: 2026 Program
Find Melissa Cundieff at the events listed below. View the full 2026 itinerary here.
Opening Night: Poetry from the Archives | Thursday, August 27th | Quaker Meeting House, 4 - 6 pm
Poetry Under the Stars: a Visiting Poet Reading at the Maria Mitchell Loines Observatory | Friday, August 28th | Milk Street Ext. — Maria Mitchell Loines Observatory, 9 pm
Poetry Market! at the Nantucket Farmers & Artisans Market | Saturday, August 29th | Cambridge St. — Farmers & Artisans Market, 9 am - 1 pm
Poetry Workshop: Melissa Cundieff | Saturday, August 29th | 5 Wherowhero Lane — Our House, 1 pm - 3 pm | Spots limited, register here
Closing Night: Reading & Open Mic at the Atheneum | Sunday August 30th | 1 India Street — Nantucket Atheneum — Great Hall 2nd floor, 7:30 pm reading & 8:30 pm open mic
Books Featured at the Festival
Darling Nova
“Melissa Cundieff’s deeply satisfying debut Darling Nova reminds us that living and loving requires us to be circadian with how we treat memory—it is every day that we must forget to remember, and we must remember to forget. These poems are alive with tenderness, temperance, and a tempestuous willingness to engage and render what is both vivid as well as invisible. “I wrote this today:” she writes, reminding us that it is both before and after the pause that the world begins.”
— Tarifia Faizullah, author of Registers of Illuminated Villages and Seam
Winner of the 2017 Autumn House Poetry Prize