Mark Helprin is a contemporary award-winning American novelist and journalist. His first novel, published in 1977, was Refiner’s Fire: The Life and Adventures of Marshall Pearl, a Foundling. Winter’s Tale, published in 1983, is a sometimes fantastic tale of 19th century life in New York City that is regarded critically as his best novel. In 1991, he published A Soldier of the Great War. Memoir from Antproof Case, published in 1996, includes a long comic diatribe against the effects of coffee. After more than a decade's pause since his last novel, Helprin came out with Freddy and Fredericka, a satire, in July of 2005.
He has also written three books of short stories. A Dove of the East & Other Stories was published in 1974. Ellis Island & Other Stories was published in 1981, and The Pacific And Other Stories in October of 2004. He has also written three children’s books, all of which are illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg: Swan Lake, The Veil of Snows, and A City in Winter. His works have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Helprin's writing has appeared in The New Yorker for two decades. He has written on politics and aesthetics for the Claremont Review of Books (for which he is a columnist), The Atlantic Monthly Journal, The New Criterion, National Review, The American Heritage, The Wall Street Journal (for which he is a contributing editor), The New York Times, and other publications.
Born on June 28, 1947, Helprin was raised on the Hudson River and in the British West Indies, and holds degrees from Harvard College and Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. His postgraduate work was done at the University of Oxford. He served in the British Merchant Navy, the Israeli infantry, and the Israeli Air Force.
A Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and a former Guggenheim Fellow, Helprin has been awarded the National Jewish Book Award and the Prix de Rome from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He is also a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. In 1996 he served as a foreign policy adviser to presidential candidate Bob Dole.
