Helen Dunmore FRSL (12 December 1952 – 5 June 2017) was a British poet, novelist, and short story and children's writer. Her best-known works include the novels Zennor in Darkness, A Spell of Winter, and The Siege, as well as her last book of poetry Inside the Wave. She won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction, the National Poetry Competition, and posthumously, the Costa Book Award.

I was born in December 1952, in Yorkshire, the second of four children. My father was the eldest of twelve, and this extended family has no doubt had a strong influence on my life, as have my own children. In a large family, you hear a great many stories. You also come to understand very early that stories hold quite different meanings for different listeners and can be recast from many viewpoints.

Poetry was very important to me from childhood. I began by listening to and learning by heart all kinds of rhymes, hymns, and ballads, and then went on to make up my own poems, using the forms I’d heard. Writing these down came a little later. I studied English at the University of York, and after graduation, taught English as a foreign language.