She was born and grew up in New York City, attended Wellesley College and graduated from Barnard College in 1934. After college, she worked as a journalist and writer in New York for several years. In 1937 she married Philip Sterling, also a writer. In the 1940s she worked for Life Magazine for 8 years. In early 1968, 448 writers and editors, including Sterling, put a full-page ad in the New York Post declaring their intention to refuse to pay taxes for the Vietnam War.

Sterling was the author of more than 30 books, mainly non-fiction historical works for children on the origins of the women's and anti-slavery movements, civil rights, segregation, and nature, as well as mysteries. She has won several awards for her writings, including the Carter G. Woodson Book Award from the National Council for the Social Studies for The Trouble They Seen: Black People Tell the Story of Reconstruction in 1976. 1

Sterling belonged to the Communist Party USA in the 1940s. Even after leaving the party, she said socialism was her long-term goal.

Nature

(1951) Sophie and Her Puppies

(1955) The story of mosses, ferns, and mushrooms

(1966) Fall is Here!

(1967) The Outer Lands Natural History Guide to Cape Cod & Islands by Dorothy Sterling and Winifred Lubell

Mysteries

(1952) The Cub Scout Mystery

(1958) The Silver Spoon Mystery by Dorothy Sterling

(1960) Secret of the old post-box

(1971) Mystery of the Empty House (Org. Secret of the Old Post Box) by Dorothy Sterling and Jane Goldsborough

Black History and Civil Rights

(1953) United Nations, N. Y.

(1954) Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman

(1963) Forever free: The story of the Emancipation Proclamation

(1964) Lucretia Mott

(1965) Lift Every Voice: The Lives of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary Church Terrell and James Weldon Johnson

(1969) Tear Down the Walls!: A History of the American Civil Rights Movement

(1978) Captain of the Planter: The Story of Robert Smalls

(1984) We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century

(1994) The Trouble They Seen: Story of Reconstruction in the Words of African Americans

(1994) Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelly and the Politics of Antislavery

(1996) The Making of an Afro-American: Martin Robison Delany 1812-1885

(1998) Speak Out in Thunder Tones

Autobiography

(2005) Close to My Heart: An Autobiography