Zoë Heller

Zoë Heller
Heller in 2007
Born	Zoë Kate Hinde Heller (1965-07-07) 7 July 1965 (age 59) St Pancras, London, England
Alma mater	St Anne's College, Oxford Columbia University (M.A.)
Occupation(s)	Journalist, novelist
Spouse	Lawrence Konner (separated)[1]
Children	2
Parent(s)	Lukas Heller Caroline Carter Heller
Relatives	Bruno Heller (brother) Cordelia Edvardson (aunt) Hermann Heller (grandfather)

Zoë Kate Hinde Heller (born 7 July 1965) is an English journalist and novelist long resident in New York City. She has published three novels, Everything You Know (1999), Notes on a Scandal (2003), and The Believers (2008). Notes on a Scandal was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was adapted for a feature film in 2006.

Heller was born in St Pancras, north London, as the youngest of four children of Caroline (née Carter) and Lukas Heller, a successful screenwriter; her parents separated when she was five.^[2] Her father was a German Jewish immigrant and her mother was English and a Quaker.^[3][4] Her paternal grandfather was the political philosopher Hermann Heller.^[5] Her brother is screenwriter Bruno Heller. Her sister, Lucy Heller, is Chief Executive of education charity Ark^[6] and previously Managing Director of Times Supplements Ltd, the former educational publishing wing of News UK.

She attended Haverstock School in north London where she was a contemporary of David Miliband^[7] and then studied English at St Anne's College, Oxford, gaining a first, before going on to Columbia University, New York where she received an MA on Marxist theories of literature and Jonathan Swift.^[2][8]

After a period at the UK publisher Chatto and a spell as a freelance book reviewer, Heller was taken on as a staff feature writer for The Independent on Sunday.^[7] She later returned to New York in the early 1990s contracted to write for Vanity Fair. Deputizing for Nick Hornby while he was on holiday led to her reputation as a confessional writer.^[7] She wrote for The New Yorker, a weekly column for The Sunday Times Magazine in the UK,^[9] and was a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, for which she won the British Press Awards' "Columnist of the Year" in 2002.^[10] She co-wrote the screenplay for the independent film, Twenty-One (1991).

Heller has published three novels, Everything You Know (1999), Notes on a Scandal (2003), which was one of six books shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was made into a film in 2006, and The Believers (2008). The Believers was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2010.^[9]

In 2009, she donated the short story What She Did On Her Summer Vacation to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the 'Water' collection.^[11]

In 2006, she married screenwriter Lawrence Konner in a "minimally" Jewish ceremony;^[12] the couple separated in 2010.^[1] Heller lives in New York City with her two daughters, Lula and Frankie.^[1]

• Zoë Heller at IMDb
• "Zoë Heller : 'I loathe myself by the end of each week'", independent.co.uk; accessed 31 January 2015.
• Jewish Chronicle, "Heller goes to Hollywood", 16 February 2007, p. 29.
• Heller's Writings, tnr.com; accessed 31 January 2015.

• Interview with Allan Gregg in Canada