Amy Hill Hearth

       Amy Hill Hearth (pronounced “HARTH”) is an American nonfiction author, novelist, and journalist whose work focuses on forgotten or overlooked voices and extraordinary stories from the past.

       Her awards include a Peabody Award and the inaugural Septima Clark Book Award from the National Council for the Social Studies. Two of her books have been selected by the American Library Association for that organization’s annual “Notable Books” list.

       Amy is a New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Publisher’s Weekly, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times bestselling author. Her books have been published in ten languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Czech, Finnish, and Hungarian. She is the author or co-author of ten books.

       Amy is perhaps best known as the reporter who, in 1991, located a reclusive pair of centenarian sisters, wrote a newspaper story about them for The New York Times, and then went on to write the beloved 1993 oral history, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ first 100 Years, a runaway bestseller, Broadway play, and film. Amy was an advisor and consultant on both the Broadway and film adaptations.

       The Delany sisters were the daughters of a man born into slavery in the American South. Both were groundbreaking career women. Amy interviewed the sisters at their home for almost two years to gather the material and write Having Our Say. The book became a New York Times bestseller for 117 weeks, first in hardcover and then paperback. 

       Amy’s books have been published by Simon & Schuster, Random House, HarperCollins, Doubleday, and Kodansha, among others. She has been represented by William Morris Agency (now William Morris Endeavor Entertainment) since 1991.

       She is the coauthor of Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the first book by the first female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

       In addition to eight works of nonfiction, Amy is the author of two novels set in a sleepy Florida town in the early 1960s. Both books, known as the Miss Dreamsville novels, are social commentary concerning the challenges faced by a Northern woman trying to adapt to what was then a sleepy Southern backwater. Her first historical thriller, Silent Came the Monster: A Novel of the 1916 Jersey Shore Shark Attacks, was published May 16, 2023.

       Amy’s nonfiction work also includes Streetcar to Justice, the first biography of Elizabeth Jennings (Graham), an early Civil Rights activist in New York City. Amy had been researching the topic as a hobby for decades. 

       In the early part of her career, Amy was a reporter at daily newspapers covering such topics as education, the environment, immigration, historical preservation, health, hospitals, the U.S. Census, poverty, hunger, transportation, railroads, police, crime, fires, and more. Her early magazine work included extensive investigative reporting into drug trafficking, organized crime, and a major bank failure.

       Amy’s interest in American history began early in life when she learned that her paternal ancestors fought for independence during the American Revolution. Her ancestry also includes members of the Lenni-Lenape/Delaware tribe. In 2010, Amy was given the name “Smiling Songbird Woman” by the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation in a ceremony in honor of the oral history she wrote about their tribal matriarch, “Strong Medicine” Speaks: A Native American Elder Has Her Say.

       She attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, majoring in Sociology, then transferred to the University of Tampa, Fla. where she earned a B.A. in Writing/English in 1982. She was editor of her college newspaper, which, during her tenure, was given an award of excellence by Columbia University School of Journalism. Her first professional job was at The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass. where she worked for the late Milton Bass as assistant arts and entertainment editor. Later, she was a news reporter at the Daytona Beach, Fla. News-Journal where she had a column. She was a news and feature reporter under contract at The New York Times from 1988-1992.

     In addition to her own writing, she is a manuscript and publishing consultant who accepts several private clients each year. 

     ####