Helen Dunmore

Helen Dunmore (1952-2017) was a British poet, novelist, and children's writer, born in Beverley, Yorkshire, and educated at the University of York. She lived and taught in Finland in the mid-1970s before settling in Bristol, and published across genres throughout her career, from literary novels such as A Spell of Winter -- winner of the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996 -- to poetry collections including her final book, Inside the Wave, awarded the Costa Book of the Year after her death. For younger readers she wrote the Ingo series, beginning with Ingo (2005), a fantasy about a girl drawn into an underwater world of Mer people following her father's disappearance at sea. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.