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About Helen
Helen Signy is an Australian writer who grew up in England – or, depending how she feels that day, an English writer who lives in Australia. She spent much of her youth travelling the world before becoming a print journalist in Asia and then in Sydney. Most of her writing these days involves science communications for academics, governments and not-for-profits, but she has never lost her passion for telling an amazing story. Maya’s Dance is her first foray into fiction.
A little more about Helen…
From the moment I learned how, I have loved to write. I think I finished my first novel at about age six, a few pages of carefully crafted words about a chipmunk, that I had my parents photocopy at work and stapled together one evening in my bedroom.
I completed an honours degree in English literature at the University of Birmingham then set off to see the world. Travel became my first love, and I decided to follow my peripatetic father into journalism so I wouldn’t have to go home and get a real job.
I worked for four years as a reporter at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and then landed in Australia in 1992, where I scored a job at The Sydney Morning Herald. During my twenty years as a print journalist, I reported on the genocide in Rwanda and famine in Sudan, worked as an editor on the foreign desk, edited sections across the newspaper, and supported the early transition from print to digital in a role at smh.com.au.
A husband, three children and a Sydney mortgage later, and my career took a different path. Since 2008, I have been working with academics, governments and not-for-profits to better communicate their stories. You can read more about my professional work if you’re interested.
But I have never lost my passion for telling a good story, whether it’s a breaking news item or an expertly crafted novel. I still love the process of writing; the whole dreamy business of allowing the characters to come alive and create their world, the chipping away at a sentence to find the right word that will make the cadence work.
Maya’s Dance is my first foray into historical fiction. It was harder than I thought – but so worth it. I do hope you will agree.
1942, Sawin, Poland: sixteen-year-old Maya Schulze is struggling to survive in a brutal Nazi labour camp. But despite days filled with hunger, fear and despair, she is able to find courage and beauty in dancing – it is only then that she feels free.
One day a camp guard watches Maya perform and both their destinies are changed forever. Jan falls in love with Maya and promises to protect her; Maya lives for their stolen moments together, when her heart can dance again. Jan ultimately plots Maya’s escape and promises to find her when the war is over, but fate cruelly intervenes.
Fifty years on, having received news that changes everything for her, Maya tells her story to journalist Kate Young. As their friendship grows, together they piece together the clues to find Jan before it’s too late.