Helen Epstein

Helen Epstein (born November 27, 1947) is an American writer of memoir, journalism and biography. Born in Czechoslovakia, she lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, United States.

Early life and education Helen Epstein is the daughter of Kurt Epstein and Franci Rabinek, both survivors of Nazi concentration camps. She was born in Prague in November 27, 1947, grew up in New York City, and graduated from Hunter College High School, Hebrew University, and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Her articles and reviews have appeared in many major American publications and include profiles of art historian Meyer Schapiro and musicians Vladimir Horowitz and Leonard Bernstein.

Epstein is the author, co-author, translator or editor of ten books of narrative non-fiction including the non-fiction trilogy Children of the Holocaust, Where She Came From: A Daughter’s Search for Her Mother’s History and The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma; and Joe Papp: An American Life, the biography of a theater producer . She translated and edited Heda Kovaly’s Under a Cruel Star, co-wrote Paul Ornstein’s Looking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst, and edited the tribute anthology Archivist on a Bicycle. ''The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma was published in English and Czech in 2018. In 2020, she published her late mother's memoir as Franci's War and in 2022, her cancer memoir Getting Through It.

She was the first tenured female journalism professor in New York University (1981) and taught about 1,000 students over 12 years. She guest lectures extensively at universities, libraries and religious institutions in North America and abroad.

Works Children of the Holocaust. Penguin Books. Music Talks. McGraw-Hill. Where She Came from: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History. Little Brown & Co. The Companies She Keeps. Plunkett Lake Press. Joe Papp. Da Capo Press. Écrire la vie. La Cause des Livres. Un athlète juif dans la tourmente. La Cause des Livres. Under a Cruel Star. Holmes & Meier Publishers. Acting in Terezín. Plunkett Lake Press. Looking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst. Plunkett Lake Press. Archivist on a Bicycle. Plunkett Lake Press. Franci's War. Penguin Getting Through It: My Year of Cancer during Covid Plunkett Lake Press