Helen Thorpe

Helen Thorpe is a journalist who has written three books of narrative nonfiction about people who have changed countries: immigrants seeking legal status, military veterans returning home from conflict, and refugees in the midst of resettlement. She has also published a collection of linked essays about her family’s moves from Ireland to England and then the United States, and the attempt to maintain ties with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents on the other side of the Atlantic. The New Yorker has said, “Thorpe is meticulously observant, always attuned to the poignant ironies of her topic.”

Thorpe teaches narrative nonfiction as a member of the faculty at Lighthouse Writers Workshop and offers coaching to authors of nonfiction books via Lighthouse as well. She is a visiting professor at Regis University in the Mile High MFA program and has previously served as a visiting professor in the journalism program at Colorado College and Princeton University's Ferris program.