Amy Hale, PhD

Dr. Amy Hale (PhD Folklore UCLA) is an Atlanta based writer, curator, and critic, ethnographer and folklorist. She specializes in contemporary occult and Pagan history, religions and culture in the United States and the United Kingdom with a focus on magic and the occult in modern and contemporary art. She also writes about modern Cornish ethnic identity and Cornish culture, and is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Communications at Falmouth University in Falmouth, Cornwall.

Hale has written widely on the Cornwall based surrealist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun. Her biography of Colquhoun, Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (2020) is widely praised as being both erudite and readable. Two upcoming publications on Colquhoun include Sex Magic: Diagrams of Love, Ithell Colquhoun (Tate Publishing 2024) and A Walking Flame: Selected Magical Essays of Ithell Colquhoun (Strange Attractor, 2024). She is also the editor of the groundbreaking collection Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (2022). Other co-edited collections include New Directions in Celtic Studies, Inside Merlin’s Cave: A Cornish Arthurian Reader, and The Journal of the Academic Study of Magic 5. Hale is also a respected commentator on contemporary women’s and esoteric art. As a gallery writer and essayist, she has contributed essays on contemporary art and artists for Tate, Burlington Contemporary, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Correspondences Journal, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and Spike Island, Bristol. She has been featured on BBC Radio Cornwall and the BBC World Service and is a regular guest on a variety of podcasts and lecture series.

A lively public speaker, Hale has addressed a wide variety of academic and popular events, including Harvard Divinity School, the Philosophical Research Society, and the Occult Humanities Conference at NYU. She is the past Co-Chair of the Contemporary Pagan Studies Section for the American Academy of Religion (AAR), a member of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) and the British Arts Network.

Sub-specialties: Contemporary Pagan religions, Wicca, Witchcraft, Modern Pagan religious history, women’s art, occult art, magic and art. Cornish and Celtic ethnonationalism, Western occult beliefs and practices, occult communities.