Local author recognized at New York Book Festival

Author Heather Hummel.
PHOTO BY DOUG ELLIS

Local author Heather Hummel just won first honorable mention at the New York Book Festival in the Romance Category for her book Though Hazel Eyes, a story about an English teacher working with troubled students, dealing with a painful past, and discovering a new romance with an "intriguing" man.

"I submitted Through Hazel Eyes to the New York Book Festival on a whim," says Hummel, emailing from the event in New York, " and was both surprised and honored to receive the Honorable Mention."

Hummel characterizes her book as a "suspense romance novel" and says the classroom scenes were inspired from having taught high school English at CATEC on Rio Road.

"I also wanted to show the other side of a teacher's life outside the classroom," she says. " The funny thing is that people often ask if it was autobiographical, and as life has it, many of the events in the book actually took place three or four years after I wrote it."

Hummel reports that her agent is already shopping around her second novel, The Universe is My Sugar Daddy, to publishers. But she has other literary plans as well.

"My ultimate goal is to own and operate a writer's retreat," she says, "...probably in or around Charlottesville."