Authors

Helen McClory

Helen McClory is a writer and editor based in Edinburgh, and she grew up between there and the Isle of Skye. Helen received a PhD in English Literature/Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow in 2010. Currently, she runs the Write Toscana retreat, based in Tuscany.

She has appeared on BBC Radio Scotland, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the May Festival in Aberdeen, as well as on panel discussions and live events such as Neu Reekie.

In 2021, Kei Miller selected Helen McClory as one of the ten unmissable emerging writers based in the UK for the International Literature Showcase, supported by the British Council. He commented on Helen’s work: “Her practice is endlessly playful, formally inventive, and always stretching itself into new territories. We are always in need writers to show us new forms, and McClory is establishing herself as a writer able to do just that.”

Helen’s books include the Saltire First Book Award winning On the Edges of Vision, Flesh of the Peach, Mayhem & Death and The Goldblum Variations, a book of microfictions on Jeff Goldblum.

Twitter: @HelenMcClory

Helen is represented at Jenny Brown Associates by Jenny. For all enquiries contact jenny@jennybrownassociates.com

Books by Helen

Bitterhall

Polygon, April 2021 From the prize-winning author of The Goldblum Variations: a tale of desire, madness and the reality-constructing powers of books In a darkening season in a northern city, Daniel, Órla and Tom’s lives intersect through a peculiar flatshare and a stolen nineteenth-century diary written by a dashing gentleman who may not be entirely dead. An interwar-themed Hallowe’en party leads to a series of entanglements: a longed-for sexual encounter, a betrayal, and a reality-destroying moment of possession. As the consequences unfurl, Bitterhall’s narrative reveals the ways in which our subjectivity tampers with the notion of an objective reality, and delves into how we represent – and understand – our muddled, haunted selves.

The Flesh of the Peach

Freight Books, April 2017 The ending of 28 year old artist Sarah Brown’s recent relationship with a married woman has coincided with the death of her estranged, aristocratic mother, leaving her a substantial amount of money and an unrecognised burden of toxic grief. Rather than return home to England, she decides to travel by Greyhound to her mother’s cabin in New Mexico. There she’s drawn into a passionate relationship with Theo, a man whose quiet stability seems to complement her mercurial character. But as Sarah’s emotional turmoil grows, there are warning signs that tragedy could ensue. In Flesh of the Peach Saltire First Book of the Year winner, Helen McClory, paints a beautiful and painful portrait of a woman’s unravelling, combining exquisite, and at times experimental, prose with a powerful understanding of the effects of unresolved loss. McClory’s is a lepidopterist’s language that skewers with playful, painful precision. –Joanna Walsh, author of Vertigo Bold and unflinching… a brutal, clear-eyed study of a failing artist that shatters our expectations of what a woman should be. –Kirsty Logan author of The Gracekeepers In New York