Helen Benedict

Helen Benedict

Professor Benedict is a novelist and journalist specializing in the Iraq war, women's issues, race, and literature. Her most recent nonfiction book is The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, to be published in the spring of 2009 by Beacon Press. In May 2008, she had an Op-Ed in the New York Times on the subject, and in March 2007, published a piece on the sexual assault of women soldiers in Salon magazine, which won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. Her other nonfiction books include Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes (1992), an analysis of the way sex, race and class bias affect the coverage of rape; Portraits in Print (1991), a collection of profiles; and Recovery: How to Survive Sexual Assault (1985, 1994). Her novels include The Opposite of Love (Fall, 2007), The Sailor's Wife (2000), Bad Angel (1996, 1997) and A World Like This (1990). She has worked as a newspaper feature writer in London and California, has written for magazines including The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Nation, Poets & Writers, and Women's Review of Books, and is widely anthologized. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, the Virginia Center of the Arts, and the Freedom Forum.