Helen Simpson
Helen Simpson’s stories have been captivating readers since her first collection, Four Bare Legs in a Bed and Other Stories (1990), won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and a Somerset Maugham Award. This year Helen will be reading from her latest collection In Flight Entertainment – a story about a literary festival with a difference – and joining Persephone Books in the Walled Garden for afternoon tea and talk.
Helen’s writing career was kick-started when she famously made up her autobiography for a Vogue competition. “I made my autobiography up because mine was so boring,” she said. It paid off and she worked for Vogue for five years before her growing success as a short-story writer allowed her to take time off to concentrate on writing full-time.
In 2001 she won the Hawthornden Prize for Hey Yeah Right Get a Life and in 2002 she received the E. M. Forster Award (American Academy of Arts and Letters). Also a talented composer, she wrote the libretto for the jazz opera, Good Friday, 1663, screened on Channel 4, and the lyrics for Kate and Mike Westbrook’s jazz suite Bar Utopia.
In 2009, Helen donated her story The Tipping Point to benefit Oxfam’s short-story collection Ox-Tales. All profits from this collection go towards funding Oxfam’s vital work. Helen only publishes every five years or so and her latest collection of short stories, In-Flight Entertainment (2010) is published this spring.
“Simpson’s dialogue, her deft asides, her politely concealed fury and her distaste for the easy way out are always a pleasure.”
The Independent
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