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At Globe Summit, Elin Hilderbrand reflects on Nantucket, Hollywood, and writing with her daughter
The bestselling "Queen of Beach Reads" joined Love Letters’ Meredith Goldstein to discuss island life, screen adaptations, and her latest novel, “The Academy.”
Nantucket-based author Elin Hilderbrand sat down with Love Letters advice columnist Meredith Goldstein at this year’s Globe Summit to talk about the future of women’s stories, her deep connection to Nantucket, and what it’s like co-writing a novel with her daughter.
Hilderbrand was a featured speaker at The Boston Globe’s fifth annual Globe Summit on Tuesday. This year’s event brings together trailblazers and change-makers to share “Revolutionary Ideas.”
No one loves Nantucket like Elin Hilderbrand
“I love the idea of Nantucket and I being married because that means one of my marriages would have succeeded,” Hilderbrand joked.
She first visited the island in the summer of 1993 during a break from teaching in New York. “When the ferry pulled into the harbor, I paraphrase John Denver, I said it was like coming home to a place I had never been before.” She’s lived on the Nantucket for 32 years, raising her family there. Her only complaint: getting on and off the island in the winter.
Co-writing ‘The Academy’ with her teenage daughter
In 2024, Hilderbrand announced she would retire from writing Nantucket-based novels — even with “an enormous amount of money on the table” — to prioritize her legacy as a writer and avoid repeating herself.
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“I knew that it was coming to the end. Nantucket is four miles wide, 13 miles long, I had written every possible story that I could see writing. I didn’t want to repeat myself,” Hilderbrand said.
The Queen of Beach Reads has published more than 30 books and short stories, most of them set on the island.
Her latest novel, “The Academy,” released in September, ventures into dark academia and was co-written with her daughter Shelby Cunningham. It was Cunningham’s “crazy and dramatic” experiences at St. Georges School in Rhode Island that provided the spark.
Hilderbrand deferred to her daughter during the writing process to capture the Gen Z voice, which began when Cunningham was around 16 or 17 years old.
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“One of the funniest things about writing this novel with her was when I would give her my pages to edit and she would give me her notes and it was like ‘Cringe, cringe, cringe, cringe,'” Hilderbrand described. “‘Take this whole paragraph out Mom I can barely read this, this is so embarrassing.’ Just because I was apparently so offbase when I was writing about my teenage characters.”
‘Hollywood is a cruel mistress’
Despite her decades-long career, it took 24 years for Hilderbrand’s novels to reach the screen. The 2024 adaptation of “The Perfect Couple,” starring Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber, was the first.
“Hollywood is a cruel mistress. I waited 24 years, basically raised an entire family, did all of these things before anything made it to the screen,” Hilderbrand said. “And every single time I did an event, someone would raise their hand and say, when are we going to have a movie? And I didn’t have an answer.”
She credits “Big Little Lies” for opening the door to women’s stories on screen; the night it won eight Emmys, Hilderbrand’s phone began ringing with people wanting to option her books.
“Where I’ve been very lucky, I guess, is that I didn’t get an offer from the Hallmark Channel for my first or second book, and go that route,” she said, “I waited until the opportunities in Hollywood were really perfect.”
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Now, multiple projects are in development, including a second season of “The Perfect Couple,” “The Five-Star Weekend,” and “The Academy.”
Hilderbrand said she’s encouraged by the rise of beach reads and romance: “I am extremely heartened by the direction that women’s stories are going,” she said.
The Globe Summit continues Wednesday. Watch the livestream at bostonglobe.com or globe.com/summit.
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