Hillary Jordan is an award-winning American author and screenwriter whose fiction has been translated into 15 languages. Her debut novel, Mudbound, won the prestigious Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, founded by Barbara Kingsolver and now administered by PEN America. 

In 2017, Mudbound was adapted into a critically acclaimed film that debuted at Sundance and was acquired by Netflix, where it racked up more than 20 million hours of viewing in its first year. Directed by Dee Rees and starring Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, and Mary J. Blige, the film garnered four Academy Award nominations, among many other honors.

When She Woke, Hillary’s second novel, is a provocative reimagining of The Scarlet Letter set in a theistic, right-wing America of the not-too-distant future. She is also the co-editor, along with Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, of the anthology Anonymous Sex, a collection of literary erotic short stories by authors including Louise Erdrich, Helen Oyeyemi, Paul Theroux, Luis Alberto Urrea, Téa Obreht, and Edmund White. 

Hillary has recently completed a screen adaptation of When She Woke for 30West and ArtImage Entertainment. Other upcoming projects include work on a third novel, as well as an original screenplay about the Texas Prison Rodeo called The Walls. When she’s not writing, she speaks at colleges, literary festivals, community read programs, and libraries, and also teaches the occasional workshop.

Hillary grew up in Dallas, Texas, and Muskogee, Oklahoma. She received her bachelor’s degree in English and political science from Wellesley College and a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Columbia University.