Helen Epstein is the author of five books of literary non-fiction
including the two memoirs
Children of the Holocaust and
Where She Came
From: A Daughter's Search for her Mother's History and the biography
Joe Papp: An American Life. All three books were named
New York Times
Notable Books of the Year.
Born in Prague in 1947, she grew up in New York City, where she attended Hunter College High School for six years, then studied musicology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She became an instant published journalist during the summer of 1968 while a 20-year-old
college student caught in the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia. Her
personal account of the invasion was published in the
Jerusalem Post.
In 1971, she graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of
Journalism where she began a long friendship with classmate, now
cultural critic, Margo Jefferson. After graduation, both women worked as assistants to
Columbia professors while launching their freelance writing careers.
Helen freelanced for diverse publications including McCall's, Viva,
Ms., Midstream, the National Jewish Monthly, (MORE: A Journalism Review), the Soho Weekly
News and the Sunday New York Times where her first Magazine cover story on
freelance musician Ed Birdwell ran in 1974.
Her profiles of cultural figures such as art historian
Meyer Schapiro and legendary musicians such as Vladimir Horowitz, Leonard
Bernstein and Yo-Yo Ma have received various awards.
She began teaching Journalism at New York University in 1974 and became the first woman in the journalism department to be awarded tenure.
Helen Epstein continues to teach as a guest lecturer at MFA writing programs. She is on the faculty of the WMU'S Prague Summer Seminars and affiliated with Harvard University's Center for European Studies and Brandeis University's Hadassah-Brandeis Women's Institute. She has an active speaking career and has lectured at a wide variety of venues including university departments of Journalism, Women's Studies,
European Studies and Jewish Studies; mental health organizations; high schools; synagogues, libraries and churches; the United States Military
Academy at West Point; and the U.S. Holocaust Museum.
She lives with her husband and two sons outside Boston.
Helen, with South African novelist Andre Brink, Israeli writer Amos
Oz, and South Korean writer Hwang Sok-yong north of the Arctic Circle celebrating the 100th anniversary of
the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001. She was chosen as an author "whose work has thrown light
on political, ethnic, religious and violent conflicts, and helped to give us a deeper understanding of the
ability of the human psyche to inflict and to withstand suffering."
