Sally Hepworth

Sally Hepworth is an Australian writer. She is best known for her novel The Secrets of Midwives, published in 2015. Her book The Good Sister won the 2021 Davitt Award in the Adult Novel category.

Early life

Sally Hepworth grew up in Melbourne, Australia. Hepworth worked in both event management and human resources prior to becoming a writer.

Career

While on maternity leave with her first child, Hepworth wrote Love Like the French, a novel about a British woman who goes to France after an accident leaves her husband in a coma. The book was eventually published in Germany in 2014.

In 2015, Hepworth released a second book, The Secrets of Midwives, that she wrote while pregnant with her second child. The novel is about three generations of midwives. Her research for the book came from her own questions to midwives during check-ups, as well as reading fiction and nonfiction books on the subject. KJ Dell'Antonia of The New York Times called it a "fast and fun read." It received middling to positive reviews in Publishers Weekly, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Kirkus Reviews.

Hepworth released The Things We Keep in 2016, The Mother's Promise in 2017, and The Family Next Door in 2018. The Family Next Door was Hepworth's first novel set in her hometown of Melbourne, a trend she continued in her 2019 novel The Mother-in-Law.

In 2024, she released Darling Girls, which won a Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel. Her 2025 crime novel, Mad Mabel, won both the General Fiction Book of the Year and the Audio Book of the Year at the 2026 Australian Book Industry Awards. Mad Mabel also won the 2026 Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel.

Adaptations

The Family Next Door was made into The Family Next Door (TV series) with scripts by Sarah Scheller, Pip Karmel, Julia Moriarty, and Andrew Anastasios. The series, directed by Emma Freeman, premiered on ABC Television in August 2025.

Personal life

Hepworth has three children from her former marriage. She lives in Melbourne.