Emilia Hart is a British-Australian author whose novels blend historical fiction, folklore, Gothic atmosphere, and the supernatural, often tracing the lives of women separated by generations but connected by experiences that refuse to remain buried.
Born in Sydney, Australia, Hart studied English Literature and Law at the University of New South Wales before working as a lawyer in Sydney and London. Writing had long been part of her life, but her path toward becoming a novelist gathered momentum after she moved to the United Kingdom. She later studied novel writing with Curtis Brown Creative, and an early version of her debut was highly commended in the 2021 Caledonia Novel Award.
Hart began writing Weyward while living in Cumbria during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The landscape of northern England, together with her interest in the history of witch trials and the ways women have faced violence and control across different periods, helped shape a story spanning several centuries. Published in 2023, Weyward follows three women whose lives are bound together by family history, the natural world, and an inheritance that carries more power than any of them initially understands.
The novel quickly found an international readership. Weyward became a New York Times bestseller and won two Goodreads Choice Awards, for Best Debut Novel and Best Historical Fiction. Its success established Hart as a distinctive voice in contemporary historical and Gothic fiction, particularly for readers drawn to stories where folklore and subtle supernatural elements emerge from real histories.
Her second novel, The Sirens, returned to many of the ideas that characterize her fiction while exchanging the woods and wild landscapes of Weyward for the sea. Drawing on legends of sirens, mermaids, and selkies, the novel moves between different periods and places, including nineteenth-century Australia, and explores sisterhood, inherited memory, transformation, and women's relationships with the natural world. The Sirens became both a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller and was selected for the Good Morning America Book Club.
Across her novels, Hart is particularly interested in connections between women across time. Historical injustice, family secrets, female resilience, nature, folklore, and the persistence of the past recur throughout her work, while multiple timelines allow apparently separate lives to gradually reveal their connections. The result sits comfortably between historical fiction, Gothic fiction, magical realism, and fantasy, with the supernatural woven into stories that remain grounded in human experience.
Hart lives in London.
