WRITER / POET / AUTHOR

Helen Thurloe is an award-winning Australian writer.

Helen’s first novel, Promising Azra, was published by Allen & Unwin in August 2016, as a Young Adult title. It’s about forced child marriage in contemporary Australia, and is based on extensive research and interviews. The development of Promising Azra was supported by a mentorship from the Children’s Book Council of Australia (NSW), as well as two residential fellowships through the NSW Writers’ Centre, and Varuna The National Writers House.

Helen’s poetry can be found in anthologies, journals and online, including Best Australian Love Poems, Best Australian Poems, Cordite, Gargouille, Hecate, HeartSong, Page Seventeen, Quadrant, Seeking the Sun, and Women’s Work.

Her poems have won national prizes, including the ACU Literature Prize (Surgeon mother), Banjo Paterson Writing Award (host, Motherland dilution), and the Ethel Webb Bundell Literary Award (Wishful Neighbouring).

In 2014 Helen worked with visual artist Shaked Shamir to produce a series of Greetings From postcards for the eramboo On Islands festival.

In 2015 she spent a month in residence at Arteles Creative Center in Finland, where she developed a series of poems based on common words in the Finno-Ugric languages of Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian.
Helen’s day jobs have included political staffer, public relations consultant, teacher of the Alexander Technique, and furniture sales and marketing. Helen has lived in both Brazil and Britain, but Sydney, Australia, is now home.

Helen is presently working on her second novel (working title: The Fourteenth Wife), and she always has a new poem or two on the go.