Sally Hepworth


Sally Hepworth is an Australian writer. She is best known for her novels and The Secrets of Midwives, published in 2015, and The Good Sister, which won the 2021 Adult Crime Novel Davitt Award.

Early life and education

Sally Hepworth grew up in Melbourne, Australia.

Career

Hepworth worked in both event management and human resources prior to becoming a writer.
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 character goes to France to see what the French could teach her about living. Hepworth was unable to finish the book immediately after her son Oscar was born, but 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 questioning of midwives during check-ups and reading fiction and nonfiction books on the subject. KJ Dell'Antonia from The New York Times called it a "fast and fun read," with other reviews of the book coming by way of Publishers Weekly, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Kirkus Reviews.
Hepworth has continued to release a novel every year, including 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.

Adaptations

The Family Next Door was made into a TV series of the same name, with the script written by screenwriter Sarah Scheller and co-written by Pip Karmel, Julia Moriarty, and Andrew Anastasios. The series, directed by Emma Freeman, premiered on ABC Television in August 2025.

Personal life

Hepworth was living in Melbourne with her husband and three children.