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Helen Dunmore

Helen Dunmore
Photo by Caroline Forbes

We are devastated by the loss of one of our best-loved authors, the award-winning novelist, children’s author and poet, Helen Dunmore.

Helen has been published by Penguin Random House for over two decades, firstly by Penguin and then latterly by Hutchinson, an imprint of Cornerstone. She has written standalone novels, collections of poetry, short story collections, translations and books for children.

She was known to be an inspirational and generous author, championing emerging voices and other established authors, as well as giving a large amount of her time to support literature and arts organisations across the world. She was also a very dear friend to many at Penguin Random House and in the wider literary community. She will be missed enormously. Our thoughts are with her family at this time.   

Selina Walker, Helen’s editor at Hutchinson, says, “Helen was very much a writer’s writer and it is no coincidence that her final novel, Birdcage Walk, deals with legacy and recognition: what writers, especially women writers, can expect to leave behind them. She left a legacy of exceptional novels, and the fact that there will now be no more is simply heart-breaking. She was an exceptional person and an exceptional novelist, and her emails – like her writing - were filled with grace and light and sensitivity. I will miss her hugely.”

An acclaimed and bestselling author and poet, Helen Dunmore was an extraordinary writer and will be remembered for the depth and breadth of her fiction. Rich and intricate, yet narrated with a deceptive simplicity that made all her writing accessible and heartfelt, Dunmore’s writing stood out for the fluidity and lyricism of her prose, and how well constructed all her narratives were.

Her novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996 and she went on to become a Sunday Times bestseller with her novels The SiegeThe Betrayal, and lately The Lie and Exposure.

Helen Dunmore graduated from the Nottingham High School for Girls in 1970 and attended the University of York.  After university she taught English as a foreign language in Finland and later became a fully qualified teacher. For many years Helen taught literature and creative writing courses for the University of Bristol’s Continuing Education Department, as well as at the Universities of Glamorgan and Bath Spa, and the Arvon Foundation, amongst other institutions.  

Helen had a lifelong passion for languages. She spoke fluent French and had a passion for French poetry and fiction, travelling to France and other francophone countries to spread her joy of literature in translation. She travelled to Russia to research her novels The Siege and The Betrayal, which were kindled by her love of Russian culture, language and literature, and both novels contain some of her translations.  Similarly, Counting the Stars, which centres on the Latin poet Catullus, has at its heart her translations from Catullus’ poetry. 

Helen had a deep attachment to Cornwall and has a family home in St Ives.  Her first novel for adults, Zennor in Darkness, which won the 1994 McKitterick Prize for debut novelists,  was set there, and both the INGO series of novels for children and her picture books incorporated her love for Cornish culture and language.

Helen was also a keen critic, reviewing contemporary literature and writing essays and other contributions, with particular interests in D H Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and Russian literature.

Helen spent three years on the Management Committee of the Society of Authors, a year as Chair of the Society of Authors, and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997. She later became a Trustee of The Royal Literary Fund, which supports authors in need of pensions and grants.  

Helen’s last novel, Birdcage Walk was published by Hutchinson in March 2017 and was a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. It was described by The Observer as ‘the finest novel Helen Dunmore has written’.

There will be a funeral for family and friends.

For enquiries: Co-op Funeralcare, Westbury On Trym 0117 950 7494.

Family flowers only please. Donations to St Peter’s Hospice Bristol.

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