"The fact that I don’t fit into neat tidy boxes is, in my view, a feature, not a bug."  

Dr. Amy Hale (PhD Folklore UCLA) is an Atlanta based writer, curator, and critic, ethnographer and folklorist, speaking and writing about magic, art, culture, women and Cornwall in various combinations.

For over two decades Hale has been at the cutting edge of popular scholarship on esoteric and magical history and culture, working to bring scholarly depth to public conversations ranging from art to contemporary politics through lectures, books and viral essays. She has written widely on the surrealist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, and was an advisor for the Colquhoun retrospective at Tate St. Ives and Tate Britain in 2025. Her biography of Colquhoun, Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (2020) is widely praised as being both erudite and readable. Sex Magic: Diagrams of Love, Ithell Colquhoun (2024), published by Tate Publishing is an eye opening, boundary shattering collection of Colquhoun’s erotic occult works and poetry. Her edited collection of Colquhoun’s esoteric writings, A Walking Flame: Selected Magical Essays of Ithell Colquhoun was published in June 2026 with Strange Attractor Press.

Hale moves between worlds, shaping both academic and popular discourses about magic and esotericism. She is the editor of the groundbreaking collection Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (2022). The much anticipated Magic: Beyond the Supernatural in Contemporary Art will be published by Tate Publishing in late 2026. This collection is a global survey of diverse artists who blend magical practice with artistic practice, challenging our perceptions of the endurance of magic, enchantment and the numinous. As a gallery writer and essayist, she has contributed essays for Tate, Burlington Contemporary, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Correspondences Journal, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, and the Whitney Museum among others. Her popular Medium essay “The Pagan and Occult Fascist Connection and How to Fix It” has had over 32 thousand views. Hale’s 2026 exhibition Holding a Bright Untroubled Sky: Visioning a Better World Through Magic at the University of North Carolina Charlotte comprised 15 international artists and collectives addressing themes of magic, imagination and possibility. A lively public speaker, Hale has addressed a wide variety of academic and popular events, and was the 2026 recipient of the Lynn Bartholome Eminent Scholar Award from the Popular Culture Association.

She resides in Atlanta with her family, cats, and a 250-year-old oak tree.