Amy Blythe

Amy Blythe (1985 –) is a novelist, poet, and English Teacher. She grew up in Auckland consuming Jane Austen novels and medical dramas like NBC’s ER and kickstarted her writing career through novel-length fanfiction in these fandoms.  

In 2020, Blythe’s first book, What’s French for Oops?, was independently published in 2020, followed by four more books over the next three years as part of her Have Heart, Will Travel series. Each book in the series follows a different young woman as she travels to a new place in Europe and discovers a new life and love.  

Fittingly, her first standalone novel, Within my Reach (2020), is a contemporary, sapphic retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion and was published during the same year as What’s French for Oops?.  

Her second standalone, The Artist and the Attorney, was also indie-published the following year in 2021. This short queer romance follows two women who agree to use each other for mutual gain, only to discover something more valuable in the process.  

In 2026, Blythe returned to her medical romance roots with Emergency Room Reunion, where two medical school sweethearts reunite and navigate a history of heartbreak and love in the high-stakes environment of emergency medicine. Her second medical romance, When Dr. Grumpy Meets Her Sunshine, was released in May of 2026, with a third, Ten Days to Date the Doc set to release that December. Both books are published through the Mills & Boon imprint of HarperCollins. 

Blythe’s books have received accolades at several of the annual Romance Writers of New Zealand Book Awards, most notably in 2022 when What’s Italian for Yummy? placed second in the Koru award section. Readers of Blythe’s books praise her ability to weave tantalising tension, conflict, and drama with convincing characterizations, banter, and tenderness. One reader describes her books as “so hard to put down” and “worth every all-nighter to finish them”. 

In addition to her first love of romance novels, Blythe is also a poet with several published pieces in Clerestory Press’s Leaving the Red Zone collection (2016), Otago University Press’s Manifest Aotearoa (2017), and in several editions of the Catalyst Literary Arts Journal (2017, 2021 and 2024) . Presently, she runs the Toi Kupu, Toi Rakatahi, Toi Kōrero: the Ōtautahi youth poetry slam in Christchurch. 

Blythe believes in the strength of storytelling as an innate part of what it means to be human, how we learn, how we connect, and how we form identity and community. Her involvement in various writer communities like the NZ Society of Authors, Catalyst Open-Mics, Romance Writers of NZ, and the Ōtautahi youth poetry slam is an extension of these beliefs. She finds happiness in the intersection of story, community and human connection between these groups and her own writing. 

Blythe lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch with her husband and two teenagers.