Josie holds a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard and an MFA from San Francisco State University. She currently teaches in the School of Design at SFSU. For over twenty years, Josie has used her flatbed scanner and computer exclusively for generating imagery. Synthesizing the scientific stories of our coast is her overriding passion, bringing thoughtfulness and stewardship to this extraordinary place of discovery. Josie’s pronouns are she/her.

Josie Iselin is a photographer, author, and designer of numerous books exploring our coastal universe. Beach Stones was published in 2006; Beach: A Book of Treasure in 2010; and her visual primer on seaweed, An Ocean Garden: The Secret Life of Seaweed, was published in 2014. Iselin continued her explorations into the world of marine algae in her most recent book, The Curious World of Seaweed (2019), winner of the Tiffany Award from the Phycological Society of America and shortlisted for The Northern California Book Awards and The Alice Award. She holds a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard and an MFA from San Francisco State University. Her writing and art focused on seaweed, kelp, and sea otters put her at the forefront of ocean activism, collaborating with scientists and groups working to preserve the kelp forests of our Pacific Coast. Through art, design, and research, Iselin celebrates the marine flora and brings thoughtfulness and stewardship to this realm of our oceans. You can often find her on various coasts at low tide exploring tide pools and investigating the intertidal realm.