ABOUT

Helen Whybrow is the author of three works of nonfiction and the editor of four anthologies. She is a visiting professor at Middlebury College and has taught writing at Breadloaf Environmental Writer’s Conference and the Iowa Summer Writer’s Workshop, among others.

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Helen and her partner, Peter Forbes, moved to Knoll Farm in 2001, and have spent the past quarter century creating a farm that nurtures the land and all visitors; and creating a community space for leaders in movements for social change to connect and restore. Knoll Farm, established in 1804 and on the National Historic Register, has been a “refugia” for many generations, even as the land and its habitants have changed over the centuries.

Helen left a career in publishing when she and Peter moved to Knoll Farm to farm and create a national leadership nonprofit. Farming leaves little time for anything else and yet the pay is terrible, so Helen chose another endless profession that pays poorly to supplement her farming — writing books. To supplement both of those labors of love, she teaches writing and is Editor-at-Large for Milkweed Editions. Previous roles as an editor include working at Chelsea Green, being the Editor-in-Chief of Countryman Press/W. W Norton for seven years, and eight years at Orion Magazine. She has a master’s in Journalism from Harvard and publishes articles and essays sporadically on food, farming and nature.

One of her lifelong joys is sitting on the ground, by a river or in the mountains, simultaneously immersed in the living world and in a good book. As you’ll see in The Salt Stones, books often become her muse and her guiding light. The best books, Helen believes, have the potential to make something mundane come alive on a mystical plane and to cause you to think about something ordinary in a completely new way. As a writer who seeks to describe life’s simple but most profound joys, to merge the mundane into the mystic might be her ultimate goal. You’ll have to read The Salt Stones to see if she succeeds.