External links
- Audio interview with Helen Dale on ABC Radio National, with transcript
- 'My life as a young Australian novelist', May 2006 Quadrant article
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Helen Dale | |
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| Born | Helen Darville 1972 (age 52–53) |
| Other names | Helen Demidenko |
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| Occupation | Lawyer |
| Known for | 1994 Australian literary controversy |
| Notable work | The Hand That Signed the Paper |
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Helen Dale (born Helen Darville; 1972) is an Australian writer and lawyer. She is best known for writing The Hand That Signed the Paper , a novel about a Ukrainian family who collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust, under the pseudonym Helen Demidenko.
A daughter of British immigrants, Dale was educated at Redeemer Lutheran College in Rochedale, a suburb of Brisbane. While studying English literature at the University of Queensland, she wrote The Hand That Signed the Paper, an award-winning novel that was subject to controversy. After teaching, Dale returned to university, gaining her law degree in 2005. She later did post-graduate law study at Oxford and completed an LLM degree in 2012 at the University of Edinburgh.
Dale was a senior adviser to David Leyonhjelm, a Libertarian Party member of the Australian Senate. She makes regular editorial contributions to right-wing media outlets.
A daughter of British immigrants, Dale was educated at Redeemer Lutheran College in Rochedale, a suburb of Brisbane. She has claimed that her father was Ukrainian and her mother Irish. [1]
Dale wrote in the Australian Skeptic magazine that, in the aftermath of her novel's controversy c. 2000, she lived in London for two years, teaching and playing sports. [2] She returned to the University of Queensland in 2002 to study law, and after graduating in 2005 became an associate to Peter Dutney at the Supreme Court of Queensland. [3]
Dale completed the Bachelor of Civil Law programme at the University of Oxford in 2008, [4] after which she studied for an MPhil in law. [5] She completed a graduate law degree at the Edinburgh Law School in 2012. [6]
In 1995, Dale published the short story "Pieces of the Puzzle" in the Australian culture journal Meanjin . The byline was 'Demidenko', although the journal noted that by the time of publication, the author had changed her legal name back to 'Darville'. [7]
The first book of Dale's duology Kingdom of the Wicked, Rules, came out in 2017, and the second, Order, in 2018. It is a reimagining of the trial of Jesus Christ at the hands of Pontius Pilate in a technologically sophisticated Roman Empire. [8] [9] [10]
In 2000, Dale was again accused of antisemitism after interviewing David Irving, a Holocaust denier, for Australian Style magazine during a libel trial in London that was decided against him. [11] Robert Manne criticized Dale's sympathy for Irving in The Age . [12]
Dale was a columnist with the Brisbane daily newspaper The Courier-Mail . [3] She was dismissed for plagiarism after copying jokes originally from the "Evil Overlord list". [13] [14] [15] She continued to write commentaries for News Corp and the Fairfax.
In 2017, an investigation by BuzzFeed revealed that Dale had also plagiarised a number of social media posts in her Twitter and Facebook feeds. [16]
Dale has contributed to The Spectator Australia, [17] to the libertarian magazine Reason , [18] and to Quillette . [19]
She was a regular contributor to the libertarian group blog Catallaxy Files, [20] under the name 'skepticlawyer'. She then created her own blog of the same name. [21] She also published commentaries on her newsletter Not on Your Team, but Always Fair. [22]
Dale identifies as a libertarian. [4] In 2014, she became a senior adviser to David Leyonhjelm, a Libertarian member of the Australian Senate. [23] [24] She resigned during the election campaign in 2016. [25] During her tenure, she wrote posts on her socials against renewables. [26]
Dale has been listed as an author at CapX, [27] owned and produced by the Centre for Policy Studies. She has also been listed as a contributor to libertarianism.org, [28] from the Cato Institute, and to Law and Liberty, [29] from the Liberty Fund.
She has been made a fellow at the Civitas Institute, [30] which merged with the John Locke Foundation in 2020. [31] She has also been listed at the Centre for Independent Studies, [32] an Australian think tank.
Dale is listed on the page of the John Locke Institute faculty, [33] where she says she has "consulted". [34]
In 1993, The Hand That Signed the Paper won the Australian/Vogel Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. [35] It won the Miles Franklin Award when published in 1994 [36] and the 1995 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal when re-published under Dale's real name. [36]
In 2012, Dale won the Law Society of Scotland's student essay competition, writing on the topic of same-sex marriage. [37]
At the back of this issue of Meanjin in the 'Notes on Contributors' there is a hasty and inexpertly interpolated note on Helen Demidenko stating that: "About the time Meanjin went to press, she changed her name back to Helen Darville."
Kingdom of the Wicked, due to be published in October, is a courtroom drama, which asks what the Romans – after the industrial revolution, but without the intellectual enlightenment, would conceive of Jesus. "The nasty answer that kept coming back to me ... was I don't think they'd see him as a hippie, they'd see him as a terrorist."
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