About

HELENA FOX is an author, poet and writing mentor, living by the ocean on Dharawal Country in Wollongong, Australia. She mentors writers of all ages and runs writing workshops to help people find and express their voice, and to support mental health. She is the founder of the Young Writers Program, and co-founder of the Young Writers Collective, at the South Coast Writers Centre.

Helena’s debut novel, How It Feels to Float, was published in 2019 with Dial/Penguin Random House (USA) and Pan Macmillan Australia. It won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Literature and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Writing for Young Adults in Australia, and was a Kirkus Best Book of the Year and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year in the U.S. How it Feels to Float has been translated into Dutch, German and Spanish.

Helena’s second novel, The Quiet and the Loud was published in 2023 by Dial/Penguin Random House (USA) and Pan Macmillan Australia. The novel recently won the Ethel Turner Award in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. It has also been shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year Awards, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, an ABIA award, and the Queensland Literary Awards.

Helena’s third novel, Loneliness is a Molecule, will be published by Picador Australia on September 1, 2026.

Helena’s poetry has been published in the Admissions—Voices Within Mental Health anthology and with Red Room Poetry. Her short stories have been published in Everything Under the Moon—Fairy Tales in a Queerer Light, Aesthetica Magazine, and Island literary magazine.

Helena received her MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. She can be found mostly on Instagram at @helenafoxoz, posting pictures of the sea and talking about kindness.