Italian-American · b. 1990
Ali Hazelwood is a neuroscientist who writes romance novels about scientists falling in love. The Love Hypothesis (2021) began as Reylo fan fiction—a Star Wars romance between Rey and Kylo Ren—before she filed off the serial numbers and sold it to Berkley. The book became a BookTok phenomenon and New York Times bestseller. Hazelwood holds a PhD in neuroscience and writes with insider knowledge of academic culture: the grant applications, the conference anxieties, the power dynamics between advisors and students. Her subsequent novels—Love on the Brain, Love, Theoretically, and others—continue this formula of STEM heroines finding love. Born in Italy, she moved to the United States for graduate school and now lives in Texas. Her books have been praised for normalizing romance in academic settings and criticized for repetitive plots, but readers keep buying them.