Anne Heltzel

Anne Heltzel edits children's books for a living, as editorial director at Abrams in New York, and writes fiction alongside the day job. Just Like Mother, published by Tor Nightfire in 2022, was her first novel for adults. Its narrator, Maeve, got out of a matriarchal group called the Mothers as a child, and learns decades later that the cousin she was separated from now runs a profitable company selling lifelike infant dolls to women preparing for motherhood or grieving it. Heltzel grew up in Ohio and took an MFA at the New School. She had already published young adult fiction, including Charlie, Presumed Dead in 2015, along with Circle Nine under her own name and The Ruining as Anna Collomore. She divides her time between Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley.