Blake Gunnels is a practicing landscape architect and writer whose work is shaped by a lifetime of returning to the shores of Saint Simons Island, Georgia. He designs coastal and resort properties across Florida by profession - and writes fiction in the found moments of his life.

His debut novel, By the Light of the Bluff, was inspired by nearly twenty years of summer visits to Saint Simons Island with his family - climbing the lighthouse, kayaking the marsh creeks, walking beneath the ancient oaks. It won the 2025 International Firebird Book Award for Southern Fiction.

His Cape Fear Thriller Series introduces harbormaster Nora Banks in the waterways of coastal North Carolina, beginning with What the Tide Took.

Blake believes that the places we return to again and again are trying to tell us something. His fiction is an attempt to listen.

He lives in Casselberry, Florida.
