Helen Whitten is a writer and prize-winning poet. She is winner of the Elmbridge Literary Festival Adult Poetry Prize 2021 and 2014 and the Winchester Writers’ Festival 2013 Poetry Prize. Her poem Fantasy Life was Highly Commended in the Elmbridge Literary Festival 2016 and her poem Moonfleet was Highly Commended in the Winchester Writers’ Festival 2014. Her first collection of poetry, The Alchemist’s Box was published by Morgan’s Eye Press in 2015. Helen has had her poems published in a broad range of journals and anthologies, including Orbis, Acumen, Loose Muse, South Bank Poetry, Poetry in the Afternoon, and the Winchester Writers’ Festival Almanac.

No Lemons in Moscow is her first novel. She has always had a fascination of Russian literature and went on a literary tour of Russia in 1990 to visit the houses of Tolstoy, Pushkin, Chekhov, Dostoevsky though was sad not to visit the house of her favourite author, Boris Pasternak, whose work inspired her as a teenager.

The novel was sparked off by a creative writing exercise in which she was asked to write about an event that had changed her life. Russia in 1990, with all its hope of change, did just that and so she has spun a story around the struggles of Kate, finding her identity post-divorce, and Russia, struggling to find its place in the world after the fall of the Soviet Union. Although it was inspired by a real event the book is a work of fiction.

During her career running her training and coaching company, Positiveworks, over twenty-five years, she worked as a Cognitive-Behavioural and business coach, which took her to work with clients all over the world. She has written six non-fiction books on the subject of personal and professional development and has also had many articles on related topics published in professional journals.

Visit her Amazon Author page on: https://www.amazon.com/author/helenwhitten.com
She writes regular blogs on social and topical subjects on her Thinking Aloud blog site www.helenwhitten.com
Visit: her poetry website www.babyboomerpoetry.com
YouTube poetry channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMrbiJoaAqrKyO0k2QRbjog/