Author: Historical Fiction

Admired and best-selling authors offer advice and discuss their latest books. 

See how writers bring their imaginations to bear on real world events with this Historical Fiction author panel featuring Simon Elegant, City on Fire; Julie Gerstenblatt, The Stargazer of Nantucket; and Carson Markland, Men Like Us.

Simon Elegant is China bureau chief for The Washington Post, based in Taiwan. Previously, he held a variety of reporting and editing jobs in Asia including Beijing bureau chief and Southeast Asia correspondent for Time magazine. He is the author of two previous novels, A Chinese Wedding (Piatkus), and A Floating Life (Ecco/Harper), about China’s greatest poet, Li Bai.

Julie Gerstenblatt 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 The Huffington Post, Kveller, Cognoscenti, and Grown & Flown, among others. Her debut novel, Daughters of Nantucket, won the New England Society Book Award for Fiction.

Carson Markland is a writer and filmmaker from South Carolina. Her work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, Breakwater Review, and Texlandia, and was featured in Best Microfiction Anthology and long-listed for the Disquiet International Literary Prize. She currently lives in New York City.

Hosted by Ilana Levine, actress and podcaster, Little Known Facts with Ilana Levine