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Award-winning
adult writer, poet and children’s author 1952-2000
When
asked where she was born and brought up Helen replied, ‘all
over the planet, but by the same two people, my parents.’
She was born in London but because of her father’s
job as a visiting Professor of African History she spent
her childhood travelling to countries like Africa, America
and Europe. She said that this constant upheaval left her
with an inability to see anything as fixed, especially any
arbitrary customs and rules, but it also made her more tolerant
of people’s differences.
She
claimed she had always wanted to be a painter, but from
the age of five, her family had decided she was to be an
author: ‘every letter home was eulogised upon.’
When her youngest child went to school in the mid-eighties
and she had some free time Helen started writing seriously
and joined a creative writing class. This was run by award-winning
children’s author, Berlie Doherty, who immediately
recognised Helen’s huge talent and massive commitment
and actively encouraged her.
Helen’s
semi-autobiographical first novel, Return Journey, was accepted
by a publisher immediately, before it was even finished,
and went on to win the prestigious Betty Trask Award.
She went on to write several more adult novels and poetry
and to win a BBC R4 Woman’s Hour competition to rewrite
the final chapter of Jane Eyre.
‘I
loved…Return Journey - so wise, so witty, so sad.’
Margaret Forster
‘Flint’s
writing is as beautiful and clear and true as unflawed glass.’
Washington Post Book World on Return Journey
Helen
described her teenage novels as, ‘not a series in the
sense of ‘starring’ the same person but Not Just…’
encompasses a world I invented.’ These novels are now
available together for the first time in a style that Helen
would have appreciated: a series look with each jacket emphasising
that title’s individuality.
She
was passionate about writing and strove to ensure she avoided
clichés at all costs, especially when writing for
children. Her teenage novels are incisive, perceptive and
truthful, as well as darkly humorous. Although she had two
children she said that when she actually sat down to write
it seemed to be her own adolescence and ‘professional
memories of teaching Delinquents which come to the fore.’
Helen
was in a wheelchair for the last five years of her life,
suffering from cerebellar ataxia, a degenerative disease
of the nervous system (David Niven had the same condition),
but continued with her writing, and particularly her poetry.
She loved the Internet and had e-mail correspondents around
the world - and was very proud of her 3-fingered keyboard
skills. The insight this gave her into people’s perception
and response to disability is demonstrated with remarkable
honesty and humour in her last children’s book, Not
Just Rescuing.
‘Her
honesty in facing the conditions of life around her is unflinching
-
not for her the -isms of political correctness, but rather
the really felt and the really thought that derive from
experiences really lived.’
Introduction
to Helen’s collection of poetry,
Gesture Against the System
For Helen
‘...you
were neither
Defeated nor defiant.
Your words still came
When you called them.
You left the bitterness
And irony untouched,
Fashioning each day
Into a merciful rebuke
To life’s casual cruelties.’
Martin Blyth
Chronological
biography
Helen
had a variety of jobs during her student years - including
acting as kitchen crew on MV Princess of Acadia on and persuading
parents on English beaches to buy her pencil sketches of
their children before racing back to the Butlins Camp to
serve the evening meals.
She
studied English and Russian at university in Canada before
coming to England in 1972 to study for an English degree
at Oxford. She was the Publications Officer for The School
Library Association in Oxford and wrote children’s
reviews for The School Librarian.
In 1973
she took her teaching certificate at Oxford and taught Drama,
Classical Studies and Russian at a local high school.
She
married John Lawlor in Oxford in 1977. They had two children,
Alice and Max. Helen loved family life and became a full-time
parent.
To support
herself while writing, she worked for Clio Press in Oxford
and as an English Examiner for the Oxford Local Examination
Board.
In 1985
Helen gave Home Tuition for School Refusers and in 1987
gave up work to become a full-time writer ‘in the midst
of Family Life.’
In 1990
she taught fiction writing at the Arvon Foundation, Lumbank
Biography
supplied by Helen Dunning
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