helen benedict
Helen Benedict is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and the author of four novels and four books of nonfiction. She is currently at work on the nonfiction book The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, and has recently won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism (2008) for this work. The Lonely Soldier will be released in paperback in April, 2010 and a play of monologues based on this work was performed in New York City in March, 2009.
Helen's latest novel, The Edge of Eden, will be released in November, 2009. Set in the remote islands of Seychelles in 1960, it concerns such issues as the legacy of slavery, the power balance between men and women, servants and masters, children and adults. Another recent novel, The Opposite of Love (Viking, 2007), concerns race and the moral dilemmas involved in trying to rescue a child. Her other novels are The Sailor's Wife, set in Greece after the fall of the junta; Bad Angel , about Dominican-Americans in New York, and A World Like This, about a teenager in prison in England. Her most recent nonfiction book is Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes (Oxford), and she has also written Recovery: How to Survive Sexual Assault, and Safe, Strong, and Streetwise.
In addition to being a professor of journalism, Helen has taught novel writing at the Auvillar and Paris Writer’s Workshops, and journalism at U.C. Berkeley. Her essays and book reviews have been frequently anthologized, and have been published in the New York Times, The Nation, The Washington Post, Salon, and elsewhere. Her novels have received citations for best book of the year from The L.A. Times and the Chicago and New York Public Libraries, and she has been granted fellowships from the Yaddo, MacDowell, Virginia Center for the Arts, and Cummington Community of the Arts.
Helen has recently lectured at venues such as Western Kentucky University, Hunter College, The New York Bar Association, Columbia University. Over the last year, she has been featured on ABC News, Democracy Now, The Roseanne Barr Radio Show, Weekend America, NPR's Day to Day, Chicago Public Radio WBEZ's Worldview, and NPR's Here and Now, among many others. Helen has also testified to the Congressional Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs about why soldiers rape and misogyny in the military and will be testifying to the Committee on Governmental Oversight and Reform about women in combat and their abuse at the hands of their comrades.
Born in England of American parents, she has lived in London, Mauritius, Seychelles, Paris and California, but now resides in New York.
Speech titles include:
The Lonely Soldier: Women at War in Iraq
The Silent War of Women Soldiers
Women at War, Iraq, and Military Culture
Military Culture vs. Women
Why Women Soldiers are Invisible
Narrative Journalism: The Art of Entering Other’s Lives
Where fiction and nonfiction meet: the role of imagination in journalism.
www.helenbenedict.com
For more speakers on feminist journalism, see: Paula Kamen, Jennifer Baumgardner, Lisa Jervis, Farai Chideya, Irshad Manji, Courtney E. Martin
For more speakers on war and peace, see: Periel Aschenbrand, Katha Pollitt
For more speakers on sexual assault, see: Angela Rose, Loretta Ross, Jennifer Baumgardner
