 The Author Sightings & Signings *********************** "So Then I Said... 10 Writers for 10 Weeks! REGISTRATION DEADLINE: 9/ VFW Hall, Asbury Park. Free parking! $179 = less than $20 per 2-hour session. ********************** Words Collide: Vignettes of the Past Author Helen Pike and fellow memorists Ann Sheridan, Carolyn Ford, Evangeline Coppola and Teresa Bonavito take you on a wild ride of self-revelation in Jersey City, Newark, Long Branch, Mantoloking, Santander, Spain, Paris, France and, of course, Asbury Park. 7 p.m.Sunday October 5. Stephen Crane House; Fourth Avenue, Asbury Park. Phone to RSVP: 732-455-3060 x. 2. $10 donation. ********************* October Events In the works is a multi-book signing Columbus Day weekend... PLUS the release of New Jersey: Crossroads of Commerce at a special "green" party to be held in Asbury Park. **************** Need a: * writing coach? * script doctor? * copy editor? Check out Pike's Professional Services! |
BioIn 1976 Helen Pike followed in her father's footsteps as a writer and photographer, starting with a newspaper job for the Asbury Park Press . In the years that followed she received a master's degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, New York; lived among the remaining potato farmers and fishermen on Long Island's North Fork, and covered the dazzling highs and lows of the technology industry from Route 128 in Boston. In 1991 she started a freelance career, becoming an international travel writer and photographer, principally for The Boston Herald. Her work has since appeared in a wide variety of publications from the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor and Washington Post to such magazines as Vermont Life, Northern Woodlands and New Jersey Monthly. She is currently writing a monthly column on architecture for The triCity News in Monmouth County, New Jersey. In the mid-1990s Helen's keen interest in history and photography led her to produce four illustrated books about the north shore of her home state. For more about her newest volume, please go to Titles. After her father died in 1997, The Countryman Press, a division of W.W. Norton, negotiated for a new edition of his North Woods classic Spiked Boots: Sketches of the North Country. Helen wrote the foreword and supplied never-before-seen photos from the Pike Archives. Please click the title at right to discover more. When the 21st century began, Helen expanded her career by taking 46 travel essays and 400 postcards culled from a now 6,000-plus personal collection to write Greetings From New Jersey, her first book for Rutgers University Press. Published in the fall of 2001, a second printing took place in the spring of 2005. In 2006 she produced a companion volume for children growing up in the Garden State subtitled A Workbook for Young Adventurers. Her next book returned her to the start of her career in Asbury Park to examine the changing fortunes of a once-popular residential resort. With 200 rare images identified publicly for the first time and 60 time-capsule memories from those who lived, worked, worshipped, and were educated in this coastal city, Asbury Park's Glory Days bowed April 29, 2005. The paperback edition arrived in April 2007. New Jersey: Crossroads of Commerce is her new book. Commissioned by the New Jersey Historical Society, it is scheduled for release in October 2008. The retrospective charts how key industries that began with Dutch trading companies evolved into dot.coms over 300 years. Helen's new project is a collaboration with retired New Jersey State Senator Frank "Pat" Dodd. This narrative history is equal parts mystery and moxie as it uncovers family secrets from Prohibition. In the Spirited Ladies of Liberty Street, the authors will leave it to their readers to decide if its contents should be stirred or shaken. Helen is also mulling the possibility of turning her not-for-attribution interviews and on-going research of Asbury Park into a mystery novel. In 2007 she began work on a memoir about her father. Plans are underway to return to Vermont in 2009 so she may continue her research. Some of those essays may be heard October 5 during the Women's Festival in Asbury Park. [see box at left] This fall she resumes lecturing about the Development of Mass Media at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She also teaches writing and edits the manuscripts of those who aspire to get published. A graduate of both public and private schools, she received a B.A. degree in English and French from Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, and a language certificate from La Sorbonne in Paris. In the tug-of-war between her French mother and Yankee father to name her, a hyphenated first name resulted: Helen-Chantal. ********************************************************************************** |
|
