Yorkshirewoman from Edinburgh, loves language, landscape and leaf tea*

There are more snippets of biography passim in helenboden’s blog posts, plus some indication of her passions and aversions. Professionally she has always worked  with the English language and its literatures – with the occasional word in Scots or Gaelic – writing, teaching, editing.

Her début collection A Landscape To Figure In was published by Red Squirrel Press in November 2021 and selected for Scottish Book Trust / Creative Scotland Debut Lab 2022

A freelancer since 2003, she specialises in arts education for adults, offering workshops, classes and courses for all sectors; and tutoring, mentoring and reading / editorial services for individual clients.

In 2019 she was Writer in Residence at the Erskine Building (formerly church), Dunfermline, and for the Tall Tales project at the high flats / multis in Moredun, Edinburgh.

In 2020 she was a ‘thread leader’ for Pentlands Book Festival – writing articles about daily exercise during lockdown, and curating a community response in poetry, prose, maps and photographs, for an online project and discussion / reading panel.

In 2021-22 she set up Writing for Wellbeing groups for Live Borders and NHS Borders.

* She has never lived in either Harrogate or Morningside