Amy Hill Hearth (pronounced "HARTH") is a New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Publisher's Weekly, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times bestselling author whose work focuses on uniquely American stories and perspectives from the past. She has won multiple awards, including a Peabody Award, a Septima Clark Book Award from the National Council for the Social Studies, and two "Notable Book" citations from the American Library Association.
She is known as an unusually versatile author who writes fiction as well as nonfiction, and books for adults as well as young readers. What her books all have in common is a fascination with American history. "Wherever Amy Hill Hearth turns her attention, history comes alive," wrote Peter Golden, author of Nothing Is Forgotten.
Hearth's first book was the groundbreaking oral history, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years, a New York Times bestseller for more than two years. The book was adapted for Broadway and for an award-winning telefilm with Hearth credited as a consultant and advisor on both productions. In the film adaptation, Hearth was added as a character played by Academy Award-winning actress Amy Madigan.
Hearth's eleventh book and first historical thriller, Silent Came the Monster: A Novel of the 1916 Jersey Shore Shark Attacks, was published May 16, 2023.The book won an AudioFile Earphones Award. In the review by AudioFile Magazine, the reviewer wrote, "This audiobook demonstrates that a shark attack can be as scary on audio as it is on the big screen…[Marantz] employs a low-key delivery that complements author Amy Hill Hearth's superb dialogue."
In addition to eight works of nonfiction, Hearth is the author of two works of fiction set in the early 1960s in Naples, Florida, then a sleepy backwater. Known as "the Miss Dreamsville novels," the books have been categorized variously as Southern novels, humor, and social commentary. Both novels concern the challenges faced by a middle-aged wife and mother of three from Boston who relocates with her family to the small town and encounters difficulty finding acceptance. The Dreamsville novels were inspired by Hearth's real-life mother-in-law.
Hearth's books have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Czech, Finnish, and Hungarian. Her publishers include Simon & Schuster, Random House, HarperCollins, Doubleday, Blackstone, and Kodansha, among others. She has been represented by William Morris Agency (now William Morris Endeavor Entertainment) since 1991.
She began her career as a newspaper reporter in Florida, Massachusetts, and New York. It was while working as a reporter in 1991 that she located a then-unknown pair of centenarian sisters, the Delany Sisters. Hearth wrote a story about them for The New York Times, and then went on to write the beloved oral history, Having Our Say. When the Delany Sisters later died, they left Hearth in charge of their legacy.
Hearth was born in Pittsfield, Mass., the youngest of four children. Her family relocated several times in her childhood. She spent her formative years in Columbia, SC and young adult years in Tampa, Fla. She has lived in New Jersey since 1996.
She is a 1982 graduate of the University of Tampa.
For more information, please visit her website, www.amyhillhearth.com
