Amy Butler Greenfield is an award-winning historian and novelist who writes for both adults and children. An enthusiastic speaker, she has given popular talks at Harvard University's Sackler Museum, the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, the Los Angeles Public Library, and UK intelligence agency GCHQ, as well as many wonderful bookstores, classrooms, and lecture halls in between. Her books have been published in nine languages.
As a Marshall Scholar, Amy studied Modern History at Oxford, researching the early history of chocolate. Later, her history of the red dye cochineal, A Perfect Red, won the PEN/Albrand Award for First Nonfiction and the Veolia Prix du Livre Environnement.
Amy also writes for children and young adults. Her books – including Virginia Bound and the Chantress trilogy – have won the Beacon of Freedom Award for historical fiction, been selected as a Bank Street Best Book of the Year, and been finalists for the Julia Ward Howe Prize, the Virginia Reader’s Choice Award, and the Young Hoosier Book Award. Her most recent books for children are the Ra the Mighty mystery series. Set in Ancient Egypt, they star a pampered pharaoh’s cat and his scarab beetle sidekick. The Ra books have appeared on state and international children’s choice lists, garnered an Edgar Award nomination, and are Gold Standard Selections of the Junior Library Guild.
Born in Philadelphia, Amy grew up in the Adirondack Mountains and graduated from Williams College. She now lives with her family near Oxford in England. She is currently working on a biography of code-breaking pioneer Elizebeth Smith Friedman, which will be published by Random House in 2021.
Are you a young reader looking for information about Amy? Check out Ask the Author, especially for young readers!
Want to know even more? Then check out these links:
- To learn more about what inspired her to write A Perfect Red, click here.
- To learn more about what inspired her to write Ra the Mighty, click here.
- Cynthia Leitich Smith’s interview of Amy on her outstanding children’s literature blog, Cynsations.
- David Mehegan’s interview of Amy in the Boston Globe.
- An article about Amy in the Williams Alumni Magazine.
- An article about the writing of A Perfect Red in Three Monkeys Online.