Home
Helena Fagan, after an award-winning, 36-year career in education, devotes her time to writing memoir, poetry, middle grade, and young adult fiction. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals, with poems and essays from her memoir, Surviving My Mother’s Survival, previously appearing in Chicago Story Press, Tidal Echoes, Cirque, Alaska Women Speak, North Coast Squid, and Exist Otherwise. She received the Neahkahnie Mountain Poetry Prize, placed first in the Alaska Writers Guild Poetry Competition and was long listed for the Palette Sappho Poetry Prize.
Helena's writing, deeply influenced by her life as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, often focuses on the impact of epigenetic trauma and movement through the resulting dysfunction toward freedom. While she seeks publication for her multi-genre memoir, she is working on a middle grade novel in verse that explores the complexities of growing up as a Jewish girl in the 50's and 60's.
Helena lives in Juneau, Alaska with her husband, a commercial fisherman, in the house he built nestled into the rainforest. Free time these days finds her digging in her garden supervised by her wonder cat Finny, creating fairy gardens with her granddaughter, cross country skiing, and writing on beaches, trails, and aboard the Providence as she explores the inspirational beauty of Southeast Alaska.