Elin Hilderbrand is the author of 31 novels, including her latest, THE ACADEMY, which she wrote with her daughter, Shelby Cunningham. She is a proud 1991 graduate of Johns Hopkins University where she majored in Writing Seminars. In her senior year at Hopkins, Elin had her first short story, "Misdirection," accepted for publication in Seventeen Magazine.

After a short stint working in publishing and teaching in New York City, she moved to Nantucket permanently in 1994. She attended the University of Iowa writers workshop and earned her MFA in 1998, and published her first novel, THE BEACH CLUB, in the summer of 2000. SUMMER OF '69 was her first novel to debut at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. She is the mother of three children and loves riding the Peloton, cooking and going to the beach.