Helen Sarah Thomas

Helen Thomas is a poet, author and researcher whose work focuses primarily upon Black British writing, history and culture, and the medical humanities. She is the author of Romanticism and Slave Narratives: Transatlantic Testimonies (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and other critical works including Caryl Phillips (2004), Malady and Mortality: Illness, Disease and Death in Literary Culture (2016) and a free, 500-page book to support Black Lives Matter entitled Black Agents Provocateurs: 250 Years of Black British Writing, History and the Law, 1770-2020 (2020).

Photo of Helen Thomas. Credit: Marcus Kern.

In 2022, Thomas published 1562, a volume of poetry voicing the fictional lives of 6 black women from 6 ports in C16th Britain. In 2022, her semi-autobiographical poetic / dance play, Salve, was showcased at the Theatre Royal Plymouth and in 2023, her historical poetic drama was longlisted by the RSC's 37 Plays Competition and shortlisted as the Word Laureate in Plymouth. She is currently part of the 'Poetry Off the Page' team, directed by Dr. Julia Lajta-Novak (University of Vienna), in collaboration with the British poetry organization Apples and Snakes, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Goldsmiths University of London, Queen Mary University of London, University College Dublin, and the National Library of Ireland. Thomas is a member of the Royal Society of Authors.

Early life

After completing a BA Hons. in English Literature and American Studies (First Class) from Keele University, Thomas received a DPhil in Literature from Oxford University.

Publications

• Helen Thomas, 'Women Writing Creole Masculinity', Women Writing Men: 1689 to 1869, ed. Joanne Ella Parsons and Ruth Heholt (Routledge, 2022).
• Helen Thomas, Black Agents Provocateurs: 250 Years of Black British Writing, History and the Law, 1770-2020 (Ebook 2020; print edition, 2021) 500pp.
• Helen Thomas, 'Women Writing Creole Masculinity', Women's Writing, Vol. 28 Issue 2 (Taylor and Francis, 2021) p. 283-304.
• Helen Thomas, ed. Malady and Mortality: Illness, Disease and Death in Literary and Visual Culture (Cambridge Scholars, 2016) 351pp.
• Helen Thomas, 'Freeze Frame: Paralysis and Locked in Syndrome in Three Contemporary Texts' in Malady and Mortality: Illness, Disease and Death in Literary and Visual Culture (Cambridge Scholars, 2016) p. 129-139.
• Helen Thomas, 'The Slave Narrative' in The Handbook of Transatlantic North American Studies, ed. Julia Straub (De Gruyter, 2016) p. 373-390.
• Helen Thomas, 'Slave Narratives and Transatlantic Literature', in The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative, ed. John Ernest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014) p. 371-390.
• Helen Thomas, '1950s-1980s: Contextual Introduction', in Modern and Contemporary Black British Theatre, ed. Mary Brewer, Lynette Goddard, Deirdre Osborne (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) p.17-31.
• Helen Thomas, 'Breast Cancer Autopathographies: The Law of the Body and the Body of the Law, Scenes Of Intimacy: Reading, Writing and Theorizing Contemporary Literature, ed. Jennifer Cooke (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013)
• Helen Thomas, Caryl Phillips (Tavistock: Northcote Press, 2006) 100pp.
• Helen Thomas, 'Romanticism and Abolitionism: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth', in Romanticism: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies, Routledge Major Work Series (London: Routledge, 2005) Vol. II, p. 253-297.
• Helen Thomas, 'Robert Wedderburn and Mulatto Discourse', in Early Black British Writing, ed. Alan Richardson and Debbie Lee (Boston: H Mifflin, 2004) p. 255-71.
• Helen Thomas, 'The Sphinx's Nose and the Decipherment of Culture', in Representations of the Nose in Literature and Art, ed. Helen Thomas, V. de Rijke and Lena Ostermark-Johansen (Middlesex: Middlesex University Press, 2000) p. 149-168.
• Helen Thomas, Romanticism and Slave Narratives: Transatlantic Testimonies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 342pp.
• Helen Thomas, 'Black on White: Textual Spaces in Black Britain', Wasafiri: Caribbean, African, Asian and Associated Literatures in English, Spring 1999, 5-7.
• Helen Thomas, 'The Politics of Reproduction: Pregnancy, Abortion, Infanticide and the Black Female Slave', Gender and Catastrophe, ed. Ronit Lentin (London: Zed Press, 1997) p. 184-193.

External links

• helenthomas.me