Helen Thorpe is a journalist and the author of four books. She was born in London to Irish parents, and grew up in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen at 21.

Thorpe began her journalism career as an assistant to the newsroom at The New York Observer, then became a staff writer for that publication. She left to join an in-house team of contributors to the “Talk of the Town” section at The New Yorker. Later she joined the writing staff of Texas Monthly, where she wrote feature stories. She has also written for many other publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Slate, Westword, and 5280.

She is the author of three books of narrative nonfiction about people who have moved between countries: immigrants in search of legal status, veterans returning home from foreign conflicts, and refugees seeking resettlement. She has also published a collection of linked essays about her own family’s moves from Ireland to England and then the United States, and the subsequent attempt to maintain ties with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents across the Atlantic.

Thorpe currently teaches narrative nonfiction and offers consultations to other authors of narrative nonfiction as a member of the faculty at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She is a visiting professor at Regis University in the Mile High MFA program. She has also served as a visiting professor in the journalism program at Colorado College, and as a Ferris visiting professor of journalism at Princeton University.