Julie Strauss Bettinger has been a literary journalist for more than twenty-five years. Her most recent book, Encounters with Rikki: from Hurricane Katrina rescue to exceptional therapy dog, was a 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award and Foreword Indies Book of the Year finalist. In 2015, Julie coauthored the award-winning Blasted by Adversity: The Making of a Wounded Warrior. She earned both a bachelors and masters degree from Florida State University and a Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD. Find her at JulieBettinger.com.