Helen FitzGerald

Helen FitzGerald (born 1966 in Shepparton, Australia) is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. Her debut novel, Dead Lovely, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2007, and The Exit in 2015 by Faber & Faber. Viral was released in 2016. Background She was raised in the country town of Kilmore, Victoria; the twelfth in a family of thirteen children. 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. 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. She quit this job for a time to focus solely on her writing career, before returning to the field part-time. She cites her experience as a social worker an inspiration in the subject matter of her writing. Writing 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. Her books are mostly thrillers, though she herself has described her genre as "Domestic Noir", a term coined by her fellow author Julia Crouch.