About Helena
Helena Frith Powell’s writing career began with the French Mistress column in The Sunday Times about living in France which she wrote for several years. She is also a regular contributor to the The Times, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar among other publications.
Helena is the author of eleven books. The first, More France Please, we’re British, was published in November 2004 by Gibson Square Books and is about her experiences in France. Her second is a book about French women called Two Lipsticks and a Lover published in October 2005 by Gibson Square Books. The paperback was published by Penguin in the US in December 2006 under the title All You Need to be Impossibly French. The paperback in the UK was published by Arrow in February 2007. It was also published in Russia, Thailand, Poland and China during 2007. It was published in France in March 2008 under the title So Chic!
Helena is also the author of a memoir called Ciao Bella, published by Gibson Square in October 2006 and re-released in 2012. Her book about ageing called To Hell in High Heels was published by Arrow in April 2008, and has been translated into several languages.
Her diet book, The Viva Mayr Diet, was published by Harper Collins in May 2009. Her first novel is set in France about the French art of having affairs called Love in a Warm Climate, which was published in March 2011 by Gibson Square. Her second novel, The Ex-Factor, was published by Gibson Square in 2013. Her second anti-ageing book, Smart Women don’t get Wrinkles, was published in May 2016. Her third novel, a love story intertwined with an enigmatic van Eyck portrait, is called The Arnolfini Marriage came out in December 2016.
Helena was educated at Durham University. She has had a home in the Languedoc region of France for 16 years. She divides her time between France and London with her husband Rupert and their three children Olivia, Bea and Leonardo. She is working on her fourth novel. She also runs a beauty website called beautyorbeast.uk where she reviews products and treatments.
Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.
Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.
Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.
In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group.
Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.
Bibliography
More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004
Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)
All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006
Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007
Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006
Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007
So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)
More, More France; Gibson Square 2009
To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)
The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009
Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011
The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013
Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016
The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016
Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018
The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019