About me

Hi, I'm Heather Munn—author, farmer, mother. I grew up in France, in the unglamorous parts tourists don't visit, where roots grow deep in the rocky soil and the oldest of the farmhouses are built of hand-hewn stone. Now I live in the Illinois River valley, with barely a stone in sight, except of course the Big Rock down by the creek—a place where I've had the privilege of getting to know the bloodroot, trillium and bellwort of the woods floor outside my back door and the beets, tomatoes and lettuce I've helped grow on a local regenerative farm. I love to learn and to teach, whether it's inviting farm interns into the personal lives of plants or passing on a few simple wilderness skills to teenage neighbors interested in such things.

And I love to write.

Something you'll notice if you read my work is that I believe in God. Faith is a very complicated thing in the modern world but essential for me. I think God is loving and mysterious and life is harsh and beautiful and strange. When I say "stories of dark and light," this is what I mean. When I write I want to give both truths their due.

I'm fascinated by faith & doubt, empathy & hate, stories & history. I think people in the past have something to say to use in the present. I think beautiful sentences and dramatic plots should go together like left and right hands. I think stories of, and for, young adults are worthwhile for everyone, because youth is a time for learning, openness, and asking the big questions, and it should be honored as such.

I grew up near a place where some of the most dramatic stories I've ever heard really happened, and I'm grateful to my mother and sometime co-author Lydia for starting me on the journey of telling them in fiction. I'm still writing, always striving to deepen my work. If you love reading stories that will grip you and move you, and make you think and cry, you might give my books a try.