Hebah Uddin is a children's literature author, educator and horror enthusiast. Prior to her PhD studies at the University of Pittsburgh, she graduated from Hofstra University with a BA in English Literature and Composition, with honors. She also holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University, summa cum laude, at which she won the prestigious T.A. Barron Fellowship for Excellence in Fantasy Writing, the Anne Tews Schwab Scholarship in Excellence for Critical Writing, and the Anne Stickney Schmidt Scholarship in Young People's Literature, and served as leader of the Students of Color group.
Her primary research interests include horror and gothic fiction with a particular interest in Black, children's and young adult horror, Black feminist studies, particularly Black girlhood studies, and archival studies; as well as science fiction and fantasy studies, African American studies, and Muslim representation in children's and young adult literatures.
During her time at Pitt, she has served as a 2023-24 Graduate Student Assistant in the University of Pittsburgh Library System (ULS) Archives & Special Collections under the supervision of Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection curator Clare Withers. Her projects while at A&SC included co-curating a dual-pronged exhibit case and open house, Indoctrination versus Agency: Horror in Children’s Literature in Fall 2023, and processing and publicizing the Clifton Fadiman collection of children’s literature research. While at A&SC, her review of Barbarella (1968) was also featured in VideoScope magazine (Spring 2024).
Hebah's young adult fiction and nonfiction essays have been included in numerous anthologies, and she has published several acclaimed middle grade books. Her most recent fiction title, a contemporary prose and verse retelling of The Secret Garden with a lens of decolonization and reclamation, released in March 2023 from HarperCollins’ Greenwillow Books imprint, and another is forthcoming in Summer 2025 from the same publisher. For her fictional work and advocacy in children’s publishing, she has been featured in publications including Entertainment Weekly, Shondaland, Teen Vogue and Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, among others.