Former high school World Languages teacher Heather Webb has become an award-winning novelist. Photo credit: Heather Webb
Many excellent educators have also earned acclaim as novelists. One of these is Heather Webb, a former World Languages teacher who has become an award-winning author.
Heather earned her Bachelor’s degree in French and Education, and she earned her Master’s degree in Cultural Geography. Then she taught French and Spanish at the high school level for nearly ten years. By her account, shelved her job as a teacher, but left the classroom to become a stay-at-home mother for her two small children. Shortly after that, Heather decided to try her hand at writing, and that is how her career as an author of historical fiction was launched.
The former teacher is not shy about declaring her appreciation of history. “What’s not to love about history?” she asks. “I think it gets a bad rap from our grade school and high school days where many teachers force-fed us timelines and names to memorize, as opposed to teaching us to explore movements and larger concepts–never mind all of those juicy stories,” she says. “This is what history, and historical fiction, really is: juicy stories,” she reveals. And she credits her early interest in history on her father. “I blame my initial love of history on my dad, a retired military colonel, lover of history, museums, and old movies, and geography nut,” Heather concludes.
Heather has written nine novels in the historical fiction genre. Her first, Becoming Josephine, was published in 2014. She also published Rodin’s Lover (2015), a Goodread’s Top Pick. Her next novel, Last Christmas in Paris (2018), garnered the Women’s Fiction Writers Association STAR Award. She also published The Phantom’s Apprentice in 2018. Her novel Meet Me in Monaco (2020), earned Heather a 2019 Digital Book World’s Fiction prize and was selected as a finalist for the 2020 Goldsboro RNA Award in Great Britain. She published The Next Ship Home in 2022 and Strangers in the Night in 2023. Her next novel, Queens of London, is set for release in 2024. She has also contributed to the historical fiction work Ribbons of Scarlet: A Novel of the French Revolution’s Women (2019), and published “Hour of the Bells: A Short Story” from Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War (2016). She collaborated with author Hazel Gaynor for the 2021 book Three Words for Goodbye. To date, Heather’s books have been translated to 17 languages.
Currently, Heather lives in New England. She instructs courses for the Master’s in Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at Drexel University in Philadelphia and she also works as a freelance editor.
