Helen is a writer of fiction and non-fiction who usually lives in a house in Naenae, sometimes on a boat in Seaview, and hardly ever but with great enthusiasm in a yurt in Wainuiomata. She studied linguistics and psychology at Victoria University, then taught English as a second language for twenty years in Ireland, England, Japan, China and New Zealand. She has travelled through thirty countries, mostly by train, and is good at studying a new language in the carriage before crossing the border, and forgetting it completely on the journey out. Into the Woods was completed as part of her thesis in creative writing from Victoria University, which she finished in 2021.