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Helen Macdonald

Biography

Helen Macdonald

Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator and naturalist, and an affiliated research scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of the bestselling H IS FOR HAWK, as well as a cultural history of falcons, titled FALCON, and three collections of poetry, including SHALER'S FISH. Macdonald was a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, has worked as a professional falconer, and has assisted with the management of raptor research and conservation projects across Eurasia. She now writes for the New York Times Magazine.

Helen Macdonald

Books by Helen Macdonald

Prophet
by Sin Blaché and Helen Macdonald - Fiction, Noir, Romance, Science Fiction

Adam Rubenstein and Sunil Rao have been reluctant partners since their Uzbekistan days. Adam is a seemingly unflappable American Intelligence officer, and Rao is an ex-MI6 agent with the uncanny ability to discern the truth of things --- about everyone and everything other than Adam. When an American diner turns up in a foggy field in the UK after a mysterious death, Adam and Rao are called in to investigate, setting into motion the most dangerous and otherworldly mission of their lives. In a surreal, action-packed quest that takes Adam and Rao from secret laboratories in Colorado, to a luxury lodge in Aspen, to the remote Nevada desert, the pair begins to uncover how and why people’s fondest memories are being weaponized against them by a spooky, ever-shifting substance called Prophet.

Vesper Flights
by Helen Macdonald - Essays, Nature, Nonfiction

In VESPER FLIGHTS, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best-loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.

H is for Hawk
by Helen Macdonald - Memoir, Nonfiction

When Helen Macdonald’s father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer --- Helen had been captivated by hawks since childhood --- she’d never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators, the goshawk. But in her grief, she saw that the goshawk’s fierce and feral anger mirrored her own. Her resulting purchase and training of the bird quickly becomes a story of obsession, madness, memory and myth that is at once heartbreaking and hilarious.