Zoë Heller

Michael Cunningham with Heller in 2007.

Zoë Kate Hinde Heller (born 7 July 1965) is an English journalist and novelist.

Early life

Heller was born in St Pancras, North London, as the youngest of four children of Caroline (née Carter) and Lukas Heller, a successful screenwriter. Her father was a German Jewish immigrant and her mother was English and a Quaker. Her brother is screenwriter Bruno Heller. She attended Haverstock School in the same year as David Miliband and then studied English at St Anne's College, Oxford, before going on to Columbia University, New York where she received an MA in 1988.

Career

Heller began her career in journalism, as a feature writer for the Independent on Sunday in the UK. She later returned to New York to write for Vanity Fair and then The New Yorker. She also wrote a weekly column for the Sunday Times magazine in the UK, and was a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, for which she won the British Press Awards' "Columnist of the Year" in 2002. She currently lives in New York City.

She has also been involved in the film industry, co-writing the screenplay for the 1991 independent film, Twenty-One.

Publications

She has published three novels, Everything You Know (1999), Notes on a Scandal (2003), which was one of six books shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2003 and made into a film in 2006, and The Believers (2008).

In 2009, she donated the short story What She Did On Her Summer Vacation to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the 'Water' collection.

Personal life

Zoë Heller now lives in New York with her two daughters Frankie and Lula.

References

• Jewish Chronicle, February 16, 2007, p. 29: "Heller goes to Hollywood"

External links

• Heller's Writings, for The New Republic
• Template:Contemporary writers
• Zoë Heller at IMDb
• The Independent, 12 June 2009, Zoë Heller : 'I loathe myself by the end of each week'

Video clips

• Interview with Allan Gregg in Canada