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.
Biography
Early life
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 GermanJewishimmigrant 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.
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).
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]
Personal life
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]
