Dr. Helen Bonner earned a PhD in Communications, Creative Writing/Screen Writing in l982. While still an undergraduate, her Night Dreams, was awarded best screenplay by Ohio State University. This play and her one act play, Mary's House, were both produced by the University. Helen won a scholarship to the Squaw Valley Screenwriter's conference, and her story, Roadside Trinity won first place in the University of Texas writer's awards. Her screenplay, A Higher Loyalty: The Jeannette Rankin Story was optioned in Los Angeles the following year.

Since then, Helen  has taught Literature and Women's Studies in colleges and universities in Minnesota and California, and now writes full time in her Northern California mountain home. Helen's most recent novel, Cry Dance, has gone to press following the memoirs First Love Last and Laid Daughter. She has two novels in the works, MsDemeanors, a novel of the l970's and Dolphin Girl, a sci-fi fantasy.

Short stories: Minus 30, To The Lake, Anthology, Loonfeather Press, Bemidji MN, l996 Canyons, Dust & Fire, l995 Eagle Walk, Dust & Fire, l994 Learning from the FathersDust & Fire, l993 Photographs, Dust & Fire, l992 Man Waking, Thema l992 Learning from the Fathers, Wellspring, l991 Woman Warrior's Cultural Suitcase, Minnesota English Journal, l991 Our Dangerous Love Affair,True Confessions, McFadden, l984 We Never Meant to Hurt Him, True Confessions, McFadden, l984 Roadside Trinity, Writers Forum, U. Of Colorado Press, l981

 

"Forty years later, remembering, I shook my head ... I sat down and tried again to read the pencil marks, etched more than fifty years ago, on the backs of white-edged snapshots, explanations lost in fuzzy, black felt smears. Clues, I was looking for. A response to that child wandering through the dark house, her rage in one hand and her love in the other."

From The Laid Daughter by Helen Bonner