Soldier Girls (Thorpe) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1963
• Where—London, England, UK
• Raised—Medford, New Jersey, US
• Education—B.A., Princeton University; M.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Denver, Colorado


Helen Thorpe is an author and freelance journalist living in Denver, Colorado, who has written for major American newspapers and magazines, and has authored two books.

Thorpe attended Princeton University, graduating Magna Cum Laude. In 1989, she attended Columbia University as a gradudate student, receiving a Master's degree in English literature.

Some of her first jobs following following her graduation from Princeton were in Boston, working as a waitress and as an unpaid intern at the Atlantic Monthly. She then worked for a short time at both the New York Observer as a staff writer, and then, having caught the attention of editor Tina Brown, for The New Yorker. In 1994, she was hired by Texas Monthly and moved to Austin. She left the magazine in 1999.

Her stories have also been published in George, New York, Westword, New York Times Magazine, and 5280. She wrote "Talk of the Town" for the The New Yorker, and has written for Slate and Harper's Bazaar.

Thorpe also published two books entitled Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War (2014), and Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America (2011), which deals heavily with aspects of immigration into the United States.

She worked in radio, producing stories that were broadcast on This American Life and Soundprint, and is a board member of the Women’s Foundation of Colorado.

Personal life
She was born in London, England and was raised in Medford, New Jersey.[10]

Thorpe's father, Larry, was born in Dublin, Ireland and was an engineer for the BBC Radio in London. Her mother is Marie Brady from Virginia, County Cavan. When she was 18, she left home to study nursing in London, where they met.

When Thorpe was one, the family moved to New Jersey so that Larry could accept a job for RCA. Thorpe remained on her mother's Irish passport holding dual Irish/British citizenship. She became a US citizen when she was 21.

Her husband was John Hickenlooper, the Governor of Colorado. The two met in 2000 at her 37th birthday party while she was living in Texas. Not yet Mayor of Denver, he and had accompanied a mutual friend to the party. The couple married in January 2002 with a Quaker wedding ceremony in Austin. Their son, Teddy, was born in 2002; however, in 2012, the couple announced plans to separate amicably after 10 years of marriage. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/4/2014.)