Helen Macdonald is an English writer, naturalist and historian of science, born in 1970, best known for the acclaimed memoir H Is for Hawk.
They spent years affiliated with the University of Cambridge, working in the history and philosophy of science, and have long been immersed in the world of falconry, working with birds of prey in Wales and the Gulf. That expertise, and a searching, poetic sensibility, come together in their most celebrated book.
H Is for Hawk recounts how, in the raw grief that followed her father's sudden death, Macdonald bought and trained a fierce young goshawk named Mabel - a story of loss and wildness braided with the life of the writer T. H. White, who had struggled with a hawk of his own. Unclassifiable and deeply moving, it won the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Book Award and became an international bestseller. It was followed by Vesper Flights, a collection of luminous essays on the human relationship to the natural world, and Macdonald has also written on falcons and published poetry.
Non-binary and candid about a mind that works differently, and living in rural Suffolk, they write about nature, grief and attention with a rare and piercing intensity.
