Bio

Amy Mackin is an American Author, Educator, and Public Historian whose work incorporates literary nonfiction, women’s social history, labor economics, and inclusion advocacy. Her first book, Henry’s Classroom: A Special Education in American Motherhood, won the 2026 Clara Johnson Award for Women’s Literature.

Amy’s essays and criticism have been featured in The Atlantic, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, The Writer’s Chronicle, Witness, Watershed Review, Literary Mama, Coffin Bell, The Shriver Report, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and an MA in American Studies from the University of Massachusetts. Her master’s thesis, “Stitching Together a Women's Movement: The Origins and Impact of the Daughters of St. Crispin,” won UMass Boston’s American Studies Book Award in 2022.

An expert in research communications, Amy has served in leadership writing roles at Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Brown University, where she has translated complex physical science, social science, and public health research for policymakers and other non-academic audiences. She is particularly interested in the place where storytelling and science intersect. 

Amy has taught both creative and professional writing to undergraduate and community college students, as well as in educational collectives including the Osher Lifelong Institute at UMass Boston. She is born and raised in New England, where she relishes the spectacular landscapes, the region’s rich cultural and industrial history, and the vast educational opportunities its many institutions of higher learning provide. She is a former Board of Directors member at the Old Bridgewater Historical Society and a current Advisory Board Member at the Neurodiversity Center for Excellence at Curry College.