Helen Benedict

Helen Benedict is an award-winning novelist and nonfiction writer, and a professor of journalism at Columbia University. Her latest novel, The Good Deed, is due out in April, 2024, and addresses refugees, the problem with white saviors, and the relations between mothers and daughters.

The Good Deed draws on much of the material Benedict explored in her recent nonfiction book, Map of Hope and Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece (Footnote Press) which was released in the UK in June 2022 and in the US in October, 2022.

Kirkus Review called it, "A powerful collection of stories from refugees stuck in asylum limbo in Greece… Gut-wrenching and necessary, this book sharply depicts an escalating humanitarian crisis that shows few signs of slowing down…An important, deeply felt look at lives in constant peril."

Benedict's seventh and latest novel, Wolf Season (Bellevue Literary Press) in October, 2017.

The novel tells the story of how, after a hurricane devastates a small town in upstate New York, the lives of three women and their young children are irrevocably changed. Rin, an Iraq War veteran, tries to protect her daughter and the three wolves under her care. Naema, a widowed doctor who fled Iraq with her wounded son, faces life-threatening injuries and confusion about her feelings for Louis, a veteran and widower harboring his own secrets and guilt. Beth, who is raising a troubled son, waits out her marine husband’s deployment in Afghanistan, equally afraid of him coming home and of him never returning at all. As they struggle to maintain their humanity and find hope, their war-torn lives collide in a way that will affect their entire community.

“No one writes with more authority or cool-eyed compassion about the experience of women in war both on and off the battlefield than Helen Benedict. In Wolf Season, she shows us the complicated ways in which the lives of those who serve and those who don't intertwine and how—regardless of whether you are a soldier, the family of a soldier, or a refugee—the war follows you and your children for generations. Wolf Season is more than a novel for our times; it should be required reading.”

—ELISSA SCHAPPELL, author of Use Me and Blueprints for Building Better Girls

“Fierce and vivid and full of hope, this story of trauma and resilience, of love and family, of mutual aid and solidarity in the aftermath of a brutal war is nothing short of magic. Helen Benedict is the voice of an American conscience that has all too often been silenced. To read these pages is to be transported to a world beyond hype and propaganda to see the human cost of war up close. This is not a novel that allows you to walk away unchanged.”

—CARA HOFFMAN, author of Be Safe I Love You and Running

Benedict's previous novel, Sand Queen, was published by Soho Press in August, 2011. The novel tells the story of a young female soldier and an Iraqi woman caught up in the Iraq War.

“Benedict’s writing is impressive, passionate, and visceral. . . . Reading this book is the best literary path to understanding the particular challenges of being female in the military during warfare.” —Publishers Weekly “Best Contemporary War Novel” citation

Publisher’s Weekly also called Sand Queen “a thrilling and thoughtful new novel.” Booklist said, “Funny, shocking, painful, and, at times, deeply disturbing, Sand Queen takes readers beyond the news and onto the battlefield."

Benedict is also the author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving Iraq (2009/10), and a play, The Lonely Soldier Monologues, which has been performed all over the US, and in France and the UK. In 2011, The Lonely Soldier inspired a class action suit against the Pentagon on behalf of military women and men who have been sexually assaulted while serving.

Her previous novels include The Edge of Eden, The Sailor’s Wife and Bad Angel.

Benedict’s books and articles have won the 2010 Exceptional Merit in