Rachel Hawkins

Rachel Hawkins was born in Newport News, Virginia, and grew up in Dothan, Alabama. She studied English literature at Auburn University and taught high school English for three years. She wrote her first novel while teaching.

That novel, Hex Hall (2010), is a young adult story about a teenage witch sent to a reform school for magical teens. It started a trilogy and a career in young adult fiction that included the Rebel Belle series. She also writes romantic comedies about witches under the pen name Erin Sterling.

The Wife Upstairs (2021) was her first thriller for adults. It moves the plot of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre to a wealthy suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, where a broke dog walker falls for a widower whose wife vanished on a lake. The book asks what happens to the classic romance when the heroine is as calculating as the hero. She followed it with more thrillers, including The Villa (2023) and The Heiress (2024).

She lives in Auburn, Alabama, with her family.