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Helen is a writer, editor, speaker, designer and trainer. She's best known for her ground-breaking research and writing on Japanese animation, comics and popular culture, with numerous books and articles published. She has edited two magazines, writing the first book in English on anime and the first devoted to a single auteur, and co-writing the "Halliwell of anime", The Anime Encyclopedia. She has won several awards for her work in this area.
Manga Cross Stitch, published in summer 2009 in the UK and USA, mixes her passion for anime and manga with her lifelong interest in craft and design. Original designs and clear guidelines not only bring the visual grammar of modern Japanese graphics to counted thread embroidery but also encourage readers to unleash their inner designer and have fun creating unique works. Helen has been workshopping the concept at events in in the UK and USA and is especially delighted at the number of men coming back to a craft that was once their professional domain.
She's an enthusiastic traveller, cook and gardener, a bibliophile, and a TV and movie fanatic. Her other great love is for history, especially the history of dress and needlecraft. Her first job after college was in a theatre wardrobe, and she has created or copied many historical, fantasy and science fiction costumes at full-scale for humans, and small-scale for dolls.
In her spare time, she writes fiction and blogs on anime, manga, textiles and other odds and ends.