Julie Gerstenblatt is the author of Daughters of Nantucket, which won the New England Society Book Award for Fiction and The Stargazer of Nantucket, publishing in 2026. She holds a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Teachers College, Columbia University and has taught everything from middle school English to graduate studies. Her essays have appeared in Huffington Post and Grown & Flown, among others. A native New Yorker who has been visiting Nantucket since childhood, Julie now lives in coastal Rhode Island with her family and one very smart shichon poo.