| Helen FitzGerald | |
| Birth Date: | 1966 |
| Occupation: | Novelist and screenwriter |
| Language: | English |
| Nationality: | Australian |
| Years Active: | 2007- |
Helen FitzGerald (born 1966) is an Australian novelist and screenwriter.[1] Her debut novel, Dead Lovely, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2007,[2] and The Exit in 2015 by Faber & Faber. Viral was released in 2016.[3]
She was raised in the country town of Kilmore, Victoria; the twelfth in a family of thirteen children.[4] She studied English and History at the University of Melbourne, before later attending Glasgow University where she completed a Diploma and Masters in Social Work.[5] She began writing while working as a criminal justice social worker, where for a period she worked with serious sex offenders in Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison.[6] She quit this job for a time to focus solely on her writing career,[7] before returning to the field part-time. She cites her experience as a social worker an inspiration in the subject matter of her writing.[8]
FitzGerald began as a screenwriter, writing scripts for a series of educational children's dramas for BBC Scotland. However, she became frustrated with the industry when none of her subsequent screenplays were produced, and she turned to novel-writing. She states that the rules of screenwriting are very stringent, but that in having learned them she has improved as a writer.[9]
Her books are mostly thrillers, though she herself has described her genre as "Domestic Noir", a term coined by her fellow author Julia Crouch.
FitzGerald has written sixteen novels to date:
A few critics noted that FitzGerald's first book, while generally described as a crime novel, did not follow the traditional rules of the genre. They argued that it belonged to a different, more psychologically complex tradition, characterised by the dark humour and flawed anti-heroines of writers such as Tama Janowitz and Fay Weldon.[10]
The Cry has received the widest critical acclaim of any of FitzGerald's novels to date, with Fitzgerald's friend Doug Johnstone from The Independent on Sunday stating: "Astonishingly good. It is utterly harrowing, completely plausible, constantly nerve-shredding ... It plays on the deepest, darkest fears of all parents about their children, and embeds that everyday terror in a plot so up-to-the-minute that you'll swear it's been lifted from the pages of a newspaper ... The Cry is a remarkable novel – its devastating power all the stronger for its realistic rendering. Brilliant stuff."[11]
FitzGerald has been nominated for several awards, including: