Death of Novelist Helen Dunmore Announced aged 64

oet and novelist Helen Dunmore, who only recently revealed that she had been diagnosed with cancer, has died at the age of 64.

The author of 12 novels, including Orange prize winner A Spell of Winter, as well as 10 poetry collections, Dunmore revealed her diagnosis in March, as well as her pragmatic attitude towards death.

“The ground beneath my feet has never been more uncertain, but what is sure is that the ambulance has already called and there is no vagueness about my mortality,” she wrote in the Guardian.

“I may be ill but I’m also warm and sheltered, surrounded by family and friends and with medical help a phone call away,” she added. “I think of a young man or woman in the Middle East who has lived less than a third of the years that I’ve enjoyed and is now alone in a cell, tortured, condemned to death, silenced and very likely denied even a funeral.”

Poetry publisher Bloodaxe, which counted Dunmore among its first writers when her collection The Apple Fall arrived in 1983, announced her death online, saying it was “immensely saddened by the news”. Dunmore had remained with Bloodaxe her whole career.

Publisher Penguin Random House, which published many of Dunmore’s novels and short stories over two decades, praised her as “an inspirational and generous author, championing emerging voices and other established authors, as well as giving a large amount of her time to support literature and arts organisations across the world”.

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