AUTHOR

Amy Hill Hearth

Biographies & Memoirs | Literature & Fiction

Amy Hill Hearth (pronounced HARTH) is a Peabody Award-winner and a New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publisher's Weekly, and Los Angeles Times Bestselling Author. Two of her books have been selected by the American Library Association for that organization's annual Notable Books list. Her first book was the beloved oral history, HAVING OUR SAY: THE DELANY SISTERS' FIRST 100 YEARS, which began as a 1991 newspaper story by Ms. Hearth about a then-unknown pair of centenarian sisters whose father had been born into slavery in the American South. The book, published in 1993, was then adapted to Broadway and for an award-winning film starring Ruby Dee as Bessie Delany, Diahann Carroll as Sadie Delany, and Amy Madigan as Ms. Hearth. In 1994, Ms. Hearth wrote a second oral history with the sisters, THE DELANY SISTERS' BOOK OF EVERYDAY WISDOM, followed by ON MY OWN, a book with Sadie Delany after the 1995 death of Bessie. After the death of both sisters, Ms. Hearth, who was left in charge of their legacy by the sisters, carried out a promise by writing a children's illustrated book, THE DELANY SISTERS REACH HIGH. Ms. Hearth went on to write two other oral histories, IN A WORLD GONE MAD, about a married pair of Holocaust survivors who worked for the Underground during WW II, and 'STRONG MEDICINE' SPEAKS, about a Native American woman elder and matriarch named Strong Medicine and the struggles of her East Coast tribe. IN 2008, Ms. Hearth went to Washington, D.C. to work alongside Speaker Nancy Pelosi as co-author of Pelosi's first book, KNOW YOUR POWER: A MESSAGE TO AMERICA'S DAUGHTERS. In 2012, Ms. Hearth became a novelist with the publication of MISS DREAMSVILLE AND THE COLLIER COUNTY WOMEN'S LITERARY SOCIETY, loosely based on her late mother-in-law's experiences as a middle-aged, ahead-of-her-time Bostonian who struggles to find acceptance when her family relocates to a small, Florida backwater in the early 1960s. The novel was followed by a sequel, MISS DREAMSVILLE AND THE LOST HEIRESS OF COLLIER COUNTY, set one year later. Both novels have been translated into multiple languages. In the meantime, completing a 30-year-long research project begun as a hobby, Ms. Hearth returned to nonfiction with her tenth book, STREETCAR TO JUSTICE, written for middle-grade to adult readers. For STREETCAR TO JUSTICE, the first biography of Elizabeth Jennings (Graham), a mostly-forgotten civil rights leader in New York City, Ms. Hearth was awarded the first Septima Clark Book Award from the National Council for the Social Studies "in recognition of "the most distinguished young reader non-fiction book depicting women's issues globally." Ms. Hearth recently completed her first thriller, a project she wrote during the pandemic, and which will be published in 2022.