She cashed her first acting check from TV evangelist Jim Bakker in 1986. Getting paid to act scored eight-year-old Amelia another six years of ballet school. Her passion for storytelling in any medium had then taken root.
Amelia was Francis Ford Coppola’s "almost choice" for the teen lead in The Rainmaker (1996). Though it didn't score her a SAG card, her bit part on Dawson’s Creek did. She learned firsthand how rarely studios feature strong leading roles for women. As a force for change, Amelia founded a short film festival and went on to spend seven years running art house movie theaters, which began her journey from the NC School of the Arts to Ann Arbor, MI, and then on to Westchester, NY, before plopping her, wonderfully in New York City.
Working as a freelance storyteller from her East Village shoebox apartment, she creatively documented everything, manifesting seven feature screenplays, short films, and web series, three outlined book series, countless personal essays, one novella, and four children's book manuscripts.
The most all-encompassing project came in 2016 — motherhood. Over the next three years, her daughter became the beneficiary of all creative energies. Finally, preschool provided 18 glorious weekly hours of uninterrupted desk time. Amelia promptly completed her first novel with clarity and force never before channeled. And, along came COVID.
Off she went to her native Blue Ridge mountains, leaving behind her marriage, the comforts of a well-established neighborhood community, and her vast network of friends and film industry colleagues spanning across New York. The allure of woodland child rearing, moonshine making, DIY renovations, reclaimed southern accents, and the time and peace to write about it all, have become a reality.
She and her ex now reside along the same ridge in two different houses, near Plumtree, NC. Their daughter - Isla Hawk, supported by resident kitties, Tula and Marty - roams freely amongst the flora and fauna between the homes. Amelia is thriving, growing new muscles as she tends the dense but fertile ground of a full—circle return to the Appalachian hollers of her birth.
