Born in Poland, Natalie Hess is a Holocaust survivor who has survived Ravensbrück, the notorious women-only concentration camp. She lived and worked in Sweden, the United States, and Israel. She spent many years as a high school teacher in both the U.S. and Israel. She has also worked as an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher and teacher-educator in England, Mexico, and Taiwan.

She is the author and co-author of several textbooks and teacher resource books, including Finding Family (University of Michigan Press, 2011), Teaching Large Multi-level Classes (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and Stories With a Twist (Alta Book Center Publishers, 1999).

Hess earned a Master of Arts Degree in Education from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Arizona, and she has worked on the faculties of Arizona University in Tucson, as well as Northern Arizona University in Yuma, Arizona where she earned a distinguished teaching award.

She was married to John Hess for 54 happy years and is a proud mom and grandma. At present, she is a volunteer docent at the Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. She reads and writes prose and poetry, loves talking with friends, and taking long walks in her adopted city.