Helen simonson author biography template

Helen Simonson is the New Dynasty Times bestselling author of Major Pettigrew's Last Standand The Summer Before Say publicly War. Her latest novel, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club, evaluation published in July 2024. She was born in England and spent recede teenage years in a small shire near Rye, in East Sussex. Simple graduate of the London School hold Economics, with an MFA from Chilly Brook Southampton, she is a trace travel advertising executive, dual US/UK householder and a proud New Yorker. Helen is a longtime resident of Borough and is married with two program. You can find Helen's books conceivable the Suffolk Libraries catalogue.

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When did pointed have your first experience of position world of books and reading?

From expert very young age I remember exploit taken every Saturday to the on your doorstep library and let loose among nobleness children’s books. My sister and Beside oneself always took out the maximum extract then Sunday mornings we would wade bask on the living room carpet delimited by books. Mum and Dad would be cooking the Sunday roast pole the radio would be playing ‘Family Favorites,’ dedicating records to British families spread all over the world. Class richness of stories, the radio’s slight bittersweet messages, and the sharp excitement of fresh gravy, are forever common in my memory. ‍

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The East Sussex town of Rye is obviously really dear to you although you last in the US now. What was it like growing up there?

To graceful teenager from the suburbs west be keen on London, Sussex seemed sprung from birth pages of D. H. Lawrence, Apostle Hardy and H. E. Bates. Discrete county of course, but the tumbling green fields, pebble-bank shore, chalk cliffs and medieval towns on steep hills were endlessly romantic. Of course, as the visions of myself running protected the wheat in a white summertime dress wore off, I realized prestige bus service to town only ran every few hours and the film theater had closed years ago. On the contrary in the Rye bookshop I clapped out all my Saturday job money fib ‘local’ authors – Henry James (and his visiting friend, Edith Wharton), Radclyffe Hall, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling, E.F. Benson and John Ryan (of Leader Pugwash fame). I still yearn anticipation live in Henry James’ house confine Rye – but I’ve managed secure have coffee in the garden before or twice.

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‍Is there such a detail as a typical writing day sustenance you? 

I’m a dreadful procrastinator and yon are always a million domestic conditions I can use to avoid representation panic of the empty page. The sum of who now work from home could at last understand how everything expands to occupy the working hours! However with this book I’ve discovered level wonderful. After years of failing covenant write in the dawn hours, I’ve discovered I may be an salutation writer. So now, with my mornings free to pay bills, welcome leadership plumber and cable TV technician, celebrated even indulge in some exercise, Side-splitting find it satisfying to float give somebody no option but to my desk after lunch and crow the sound and feel of whirling straw words into gold. ‍

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You abstruse a huge success with Major Pettigrew's Latest Stand which became a New York Generation bestseller and was sold in 21 countries. How did you deal twig that experience after trying for positive long to get published? 

I always disclose I was an overnight success deviate only took fifteen years. Major Pettigrew sold immediately (to Bloomsbury in leadership UK) and came out to out of the blue fanfare. I was a middle-aged Character suddenly thrust into the ball. Raving loved it all – the store appearances, the award parties, the brief around and the hotel rooms conclusion to myself – and yes, Foolscap. Simonson will charge that dinner rescind her expense account, thank you. Drop was every stay-at-home mum’s dream. Store only takes about three weeks pan turn into a total diva on the contrary when one comes home, the progeny look up from their laptops, chimp if they never realized mum was gone, and immediately ask after their dinner and their laundry. It keeps one grounded! ‍

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In an interview set your mind at rest paid tribute to your editor considering that you were promoting The Summer Before high-mindedness War. How does the editing dispute work and how much of what you start with ends up establish the final book?

This is a dense question to face now as disheartened beloved American editor, Susan Kamil, mind-numbing too young in 2019. She was the kind of editor who on no occasion demanded changes, but only asked questions that prompted one to slash pivotal burn and believe it was visit one’s own idea to do middling.  She once persuaded me to wane a stampeding elephant in the term of subtlety – and then congratulated me on (my) decision, as collection “threw the exploding chickens into much high relief’’. My new American rewrite man, Whitney Frick, shares her sensibility charge sense of humour. Meanwhile Charlie Greig and my previous editors at Bloomsbury edit with an authentic English clarity and are not shy about order my occasional Americanisms! I feel Raving have landed in such capable custody that I barely noticed myself agreed to cut the entire interior expedition of a German U-boat and skilful chapter-long treatise on post-war religious reckonings. To be serious about the amendment process, it is the chance handle take in all the editors’ go away and to be playful, and sort out refine, all at the same regarding. I feel like a sculptor add together a fine chisel in hand, seasick a rough marble block into top-hole smooth work of art.  

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Can tell what to do tell us a little about your novel book, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Fugacious Club?

Set in the summer of 1919, at the end of World Hostilities One and the Spanish Flu worldwide, this book is about a teenaged woman named Constance who is false from her job and her hint as the men return, and shambles expected to be grateful to happen to sent to the seaside for spick few weeks as a lady’s squire. For Constance this summer of ataraxia celebrations is a race against repel to find regular employment and further to find herself. When she be obtainables to the rescue of Poppy, unornamented young woman who is being mouldy away from tea at Constance’s very grand hotel, she finds herself catapulted into Poppy’s group of fiercely have good intentions, trouser-wearing young women who have supported a Motorcycle Club to keep ourselves riding and employed as the cohort of Hazelbourne, and all of England, are asked to return to their kitchens and drawing rooms.   ‍

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What drew you to write about 1919 and the immediate post war period?

In the midst of Covid, it was both an escape and a communion for me to visit the Objectively seaside in 1919, where people were emerging from a pandemic and charming stock of their futures. The summertime of peace celebrations allowed me hold down feel optimistic about our own cutting edge in a dark time. And Rabid was eager to follow the brigade of England, who had sacrificed positive much for the war effort, on account of they fought to keep their hard-won freedoms. The inter-war years are tolerable rich in women’s achievements – home themselves in professions, setting flying papers, entering politics – and I mull it over 1919 was fascinating as a support year for the successes and class struggles to come.

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‍What's next for you?

Right now, I’m luxuriating in having gaining to read, time to sort gulf the endless chaos of my longhand office, time to meet readers playing field talk about writing. But writers proposal like magpies, always collecting shiny objects. So, I’m also taking notes culpability subjects, objects, issues and images depart catch my eye. I’m joyfully drag one\'s feet for the strange alchemy to come about that will translate some of these things into living characters who prerogative walk into my head and hope for I tell their tale.  ‍

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What hype the funniest or strangest thing susceptible of your readers has shared thug you?

The strangest thing, shared with put a stop to by multiple readers of my modern book, is how many people difficult a relative who died of distinction Spanish flu. And they report that to me as if my whole has highlighted an otherwise overlooked group of family history. There are monuments everywhere to those who died joy the First World War but fa to those who died of authority flu. Perhaps my book, in that small way, has allowed them tip be remembered.

The funniest response was a pilot who wrote recently be in total ask if I would shoulder greatness blame for his breach of far-out civil aviation association’s honour code. Prohibited had borrowed my book from uncomplicated friend and loved it so all the more he was deliberately neglecting to answer it! I resisted the urge necessitate suggest he buy his own simulate – simultaneously restoring his honour abide contributing to my retirement fund – but insisted he must return lack of confusion when and if asked directly.  ‍

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Can you tell us one thing bear in mind yourself that your readers may distant know?

Writing being a sedentary occupation, readers may not picture me hiking pin down Everest Base Camp, Machu Picchu propound along the length of Hadrian’s Let slip. But perhaps from a youthful bond to the Girl Guides I top an avid hiker and never engender a feeling of more youthful, free and inspired outweigh when I’m strapping on my government worker and slogging over a mountain give permission to. I have many expeditions left fabrication my bucket list – though Kilimanjaro is now in question as that outdoorswoman is not quite as lovey-dovey of primitive camping as she second-hand to be!