For sisters-in-law Betsy Banks Epstein and Elinor Svenson, turning 60 meant settling down, taking up new hobbies, spending time with family, and maybe a few extra trips to the doctor’s office. But it also meant something else: the opportunity to think deeply about the slightly scary, possibly exciting next chapter in their lives, and what they could learn from the lives of other sexagenarians around them.

That opportunity turned into a book called Still Becoming: Conversations With People in Their Sixties. On Friday there was a book reception at the Simon Gallery in Vineyard Haven.

Ms. Svenson, a psychologist, and Ms. Epstein, a freelance writer, talked to nearly 25 individuals and a handful of couples about their lives at the liminal transition between seniority in the workspace and senior discounts at the movie theatre that a 60th birthday brings.

“I’ve always been a person who’s curious about what’s going on in people’s lives,” Ms. Svenson said, “and I’ve used it to help me try to understand what’s going on in my life.”

When she turned 59, Ms. Svenson lost her husband.

“It had me going into my 60s thinking I’m gonna need to do a lot of reshaping and refiguring things out,” Ms. Svenson said. “I thought, let me hear what people have to say about 60, and, without going any further, I thought, I’d like to write a book about this.”

She recruited her sister-in-law, Ms. Epstein, to help put people’s stories on paper, and the two came up with a list of potential subjects.

“It definitely wasn’t a scientific sample,” Ms. Epstein said, “but we tried to have a variety of different career choices, lifestyle choices. We wanted to get a mix in the best way that we could.”

Their interviewees range from Steve Johnson, the owner of an auto-body shop in suburban Massachusetts, to Celtics legend Jo Jo White and his wife Deborah. The book includes prominent figures in the medical and business world, and people who Ms. Svenson likes to say, “have prominence in their own world.”

“We asked them a series of questions,” Ms. Svenson explained, “and came up with a narrative that they felt is reflective of where they are in this juncture of their lives.”

Rather than just transcribing the interviews, Ms. Svenson and Ms. Epstein used writing and photography to create a sense of intimacy, coherence and unity between each of their subjects. They asked open-ended questions such as, “How do you see yourself at this time in your life?” that led to broader conversations about aging, family, love, loss and remembrance.

Ms. Epstein said that many of the people in their 20s and 30s who have read the book expressed excitement about getting to a stage in life when learned experience and wisdom can help mitigate some of the stressors they’ve dealt with for much of early adulthood.

“This book doesn’t just apply for when you are hitting 60, but when you are moving into that next chapter, whatever that chapter is,” Ms. Svenson said.

For Ms. Epstein and Ms. Svenson, that next chapter is the particular challenge of being 60 in 2018. It’s a challenge for which they feel ready.

“Sixty year olds today have more self-choice than our parents did,” Ms. Svenson said. “People we talked to were managing challenges and hardships, but they didn’t see the managing of the hardship as being an end. They saw it as something they could move through, and there was a positive energy that we felt with a lot of people that we interviewed. I think we’re still becoming. It’s not a done deal.”