THE SHORT BIO:
Nicole M. Hewitt is a middle grade author living in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, three grown kids, and three overly-enthusiastic pups. She hates to run, but she succeeded in finishing a marathon in 2022 (it was for a good cause!). She enjoys nature but doesn’t see nearly enough of it in Illinois, so her family travels to national parks as often as possible. She also loves to sing and can often be heard spontaneously composing incredibly profound songs about the fluffiest members of her family (the dogs, in case you weren’t sure). Her debut middle grade novel in verse, ORPHAN’S SONG, will be releasing in early 2025.
Nicole is represented by Deborah Warren at East/West Literary.
THE LONG VERSION:
Nicole first had visions of a writing career when she won the third-grade Young Authors competition at her school. She went on to write and direct many a backyard production–making sure to cast as many of her neighborhood friends as possible so all their parents would be forced to attend and she would have a large audience to view her achievements.
Nicole kept writing throughout high school–mostly for the literary magazine–and college, where she was an acting major but took writing classes as well. She wrote a short play that was chosen to be performed at a showcase, attended mostly by her peers and their parents. (College students’ parents are a big step up from the neighborhood kids’ parents, right?)
After college, she somehow ended up working at a software company as a business analyst, where she wrote stacks and stacks of technical documentation and lamented the loss of her creativity.
When her kids were born, she decided to stay home with them, and eventually ended up homeschooling two of the three (she learned quickly that every child is unique, and each of her three children have ended up on different schooling paths). She rediscovered her love of books and writing when she started her blog Feed Your Fiction Addiction. And she was able to stretch her creative muscles even more when she taught acting, language arts, and writing at a large homeschool co-op for six years. When she couldn’t find plays that worked perfectly for her acting classes, she wrote them. This time she had a whole co-op’s worth of parents forced to come to her productions!
Nicole wrote her first full-length novel while she was still teaching at the homeschool co-op, but when her middle daughter switched to public school as a freshman in high school, she began writing full-time. Her debut middle grade novel is coming in early 2025!