A graduate of London’s Faber Academy Helen Paris is author of the novels Lost Property and The Invisible Women’s Club, both published by Penguin. Recent honours include fellowships from Bogliasco, MacDowell, and Yaddo.
Helen’s Books
A novel about loss, love and finding your place in the world.
One lost purse. One lost woman.
A chance encounter that changes everything.
Dot Watson has lost her way. Wracked with guilt and struggling with grief, she has tucked herself away in the London Transport Lost Property office, finding solace in the process of cataloguing misplaced things. It’s not glamorous or exciting, but it’s solitary – just the way Dot likes it.
That is, until elderly Mr Appleby walks through the door in search of his late wife’s purse and Dot immediately feels a connection to him. Determined to help, she sets off on an extraordinary journey, one that could lead Dot to reclaim her life and find where she truly belongs…
Also available in German (Das Fundbüro der verlorenen Träume, published by dtv Verlagsgesellschaft), Spanish (Objectos Perdidos published by Maeva Ediciones) and Swedish (Bland Hittegods Och Vilsna Hjärtan published by Sekwa Förlag).
Lost Property by Helen Paris, published by Penguin, 2022
Lost Property
The perfect feel-good and life-affirming book about the power of unlikely friendships and connection.
Ignored. Overlooked. But they’re about to prove everyone wrong…
Janet Pimm is used to being invisible. 70 something, with her beloved allotment for company, she simply doesn’t need anyone else.
But when the local council threaten to close the allotments, Janet will do anything she can to try to save them – even enlisting the help of her irritatingly upbeat and interfering neighbour, Bev.
As the two women set off on a journey together, Janet begins to realise that perhaps she isn’t so happy to blend into the background after all. And that maybe there’s more to Bev than she first thought. As they fight to save the place Janet loves most, both women find their voice again and no one can silence them now…
A story of friendship, female lives post-menopause, community spirit and the importance of connection.
The Invisible Women’s Club by Helen Paris, published by Penguin, Aug 2023
The Invisible Women's Club
In this book we offer a smörgåsbord of creative prompts and pathways enriched with critical thinking tools and questions, a hybrid approach we call ‘Curious Methods’. Curious Methods derives from the name of our performance company Curious and from the artist-scholar/research-creation cultures we work in. At its core, all our work combined modes of inquiry, experimentation and reflection or curious methods.
This book is open to adaptation by a wide range of interdisciplinary practitioners who value studio/field/lab work in its many guises, whether you are working solo, in collaboration or using this book as a resource for your teaching.
As we write we imagine ourselves in the studio with you, not only giving you exercises and workshop ideas and instructions but sharing the philosophies which inform them. We imagine this as a convivial space. As artists, we know some of the walls we hit when making work. As teachers we understand some of the challenges students face in finding their voices, owning their stories.
Some of the assignments in this book are fully-fledged exercises that are designed to be followed instruction by instruction, others are offered more as invitations or prompts for you to experiment with, including a few provocations to challenge boundaries or performance anxieties. In curating this creative-critical collection, we are inviting you on an artistic journey fuelled by curiosity, propelled by experimentation and navigated by contemplation.
Devising Theatre & Performance: Curious Methods By Leslie Hill and Helen Paris, published by Intellect Books, Sept 2021
Devising Theatre and Performance
Other Titles include
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Performing Proximity
Exploring the rise of immersive productions that foreground performer-audience relationships, Leslie Hill and Helen Paris draw on their work as performance artists to examine the impact of proximity in performance. Providing contemporary case studies and workshop exercises, this book aids the analysis and practice of close encounter theatre.
Performing Proximity – Curious Intimacies By Leslie Hill and Helen Paris Published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014
Available from Unbound – £23.99 -
Performance & Place
Featuring a mix of both practitioners and scholars, this book explores the sites of contemporary performance and the notion of place. It examines how we experience performance’s many and varied sites as part of the fabric of the art work itself, whether they are institutional or transient, real or online. Half of the essays are by artists who speak directly from their own experience of placing performance outside of conventional spaces; half are by academics who reflect critically on place and placelessness.
Performance & Place
Edited by Leslie Hill and Helen Paris
Published by Palgrave Macmillan, April 2006
ISBN 1-4039-4504-7
Available from Unbound – £20.99 -
Perform Experience ReLive
This limited edition bookexplores how performance art is made and understood in the digital age. Taking inspiration from the BMW Tate Live Performance Events, Room and Talks series, it introduces key ideas in performance today. Artists, curators and writers including Liu Ding, Tim Etchells, Adrian Heathfield, Suzanne Lacy, Chantal Pontbriand, Claire Tancons and Catherine Wood examine performance from different perspectives, and explore what it can tell us about contemporary life. Readers are also encouraged to perform the book using the accompanying augmented reality app, which is available to download for free via iTunes or Google Play.
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Guerilla Guide to Making a Living as an Artist
Written by artists, for artists, the Guerilla Guide is designed for people engaged in creating original performance work including live art, installation, digital art and hybrids of theatre and visual art. Although there is no ‘how to’ for this kind of work, no clearly defined industry, this book stares unflinchingly into the headlights of the oncoming question: how do you make a living as an artist? It offers an invaluable collection of individual experiences and strategies from veteran artists and administrators, including Bobby Baker, Tim Miller, Guillermo Gomez Pena, Stelarc, Lois Weaver and Martha Wilson.
The Guerilla Guide To Performance Art: How To Make A Living As An Artist By Leslie Hill and Helen Paris Published by Continuum, 2nd Edition 2004 ISBN 0-8264-7398-9 Available from Amazon and Bloomsbury, £36.99
Full list of published works
Paris, H. (2023), The Invisible Women’s Club. Penguin.
Paris, H. (2021) Lost Property. Penguin.
Paris, H. and Hill, L. (2021) Devising Theatre and Performance: Curious Methods. The University of Chicago Press and Intellect.
Paris, H. and Hill, L. (eds.) (2018) Artist’s Border Panic Compendium publication commissioned by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and the Live Art Development Agency, London.
Paris, H and Hill, L (2014) Performing Proximity, Palgrave Macmillan, considers anthropological concepts of proxemics within the context of contemporary performance studies. Specifically, it investigates distance in physical space between performers and audiences and how that distance or proximity impacts our encounters with one another. It looks at intimacy, embodied practice, live and digital proximities, working with and through the senses and biology and biography.
Books
Paris, H. (2025) ‘Six Duets for the Voice’, in Voicings Journal (Oct). Intellect Press.
Paris, H. (2025) Round Table in Methuen Drama Handbook of Women in Contemporary British Theatre. Marissia Fragkou and Rebecca Benzie (eds). Bloomsbury.
Paris, H. (2023) ‘Women & Gardening’, in The Irish Times.
Paris, H. (2023) ‘The Flipside of Invisibility’ in Female First.
Paris, H. (2023) ‘Getting On – Later Life Female Friendship’ in Bookanista.
Paris, H. (2023) ‘Invisible Women’ in Noon.
Paris, H. (2023) ‘Companion Planting’ in The Saturday Express.
Paris, H. (2023) ‘The Ramblers Association’ in Simple Things.
Paris, H. and Hill, L. (2020) ‘Performing Pedagogy’ in Dance Journal. London: Routledge.
Paris, H. (2019) ‘Rhapsody for You’, in Performance Research, On Generosity, L.B. Clark and Michael Peterson (series eds). Routledge.
Paris, H. (2017) ‘Holding Time’ in Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage, Daniel Sack (ed.). Routledge.
Articles, Chapters & Op-ed’s
Press /Publications about the work of Helen Paris:
The Guardian, The Irish Times, Good Housekeeping, Bella, Women’s Own, The Express, BBC Times Radio, BBC West Midlands, Radio Europe, BBC Radio Shropshire, BBC Radio Newcastle, BBC Radio Gloucestershire, BBC Surrey, The Independent, BBC Radio 2 Annika Rice Arts Programme, The Stage, The Herald, Scotland on Sunday, Daily Telegraph, The Times, Metro, BBC Scotland, The New Statesman.
Gorman, Sarah (2020) Women in Performance: Repurposing Failure. London: Routledge.
OEuvres commentées in Respirez l’Art, L’Olfaction Dans la Creation Respirez l’Art, Arts Hebdo Medias Journal, March 2015.
Drobnick, J. (2014) ‘Smell: The Hybrid Art’, in Chantal Jaquet (ed.), L’Art Olfactif Contemporain. Paris: Sorbonne.
Freeman, J. (2009) Blood, Sweat & Theory: Research through Practice in Performance. London: Middlesex University Press.
Machon, J. (2009) (Syn)aesthetics. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hill, L. and Paris, H. (2007) Greenham Common. London: Artsadmin. Commissioned by New Greenham Arts.
Hill, L. and Paris, H. (eds.) (2006) Performance and Place. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hill, L. and Paris, H. (eds.) (2004/2001) Guerilla Performance: How To Make a Living as an Artist. London: Continuum. A hands-on guide for artists at all stages of their careers engaged in creating original performance and multimedia work, including hybrids of theatre, visual art, installation, physical theatre, dance, and digital.
Paris, H. (2016) ‘Close Performance’ in Performance: from Making to Museum. London: Tate Modern.
Paris, H. (2014) ‘Still. Moving’ in Choreographic Dwelling, G. Schiller and S. Rubridge (eds). Palgrave Macmillan.
Paris, H. (2012) ‘Below the Surface’ in Performance and Technology: Practices of Empowerment, Embodiment and Technicity, Broadhurst, S. and Machon, J. (eds). Palgrave Macmillan.
Paris, H. (2009) ‘The Smell of it’ in Freeman, J. Blood, Sweat & Theory: Research through Practice in Performance. Middlesex University Press.
Paris, H. and Hill, L. (2009) ‘Curious Interview’ in Machon, J. (Syn)aesthetics. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Paris, H. (2008) ‘Curious Journey’ in Theatre/Public. Paris.
Paris, H. and Hill, L. (2008) ‘Being Curious’ in Aston, E. and Harris, G. (eds) Performance Practices and Process. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Paris, H. (2007) The Senses in Performance in Contemporary Theatre Review.
Paris, H. and Hill, L. (2006) ‘Curious Feminists’ in Aston, E. and Harris, G. (eds) Feminist Futures. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Paris, H. (2006) ‘Too Close for Comfort’ in Hill, L. and Paris, H. (eds) Performance and Place. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Aston, E. and Harris, G. (2008) ‘Being Curious’, in Aston, E. and Harris, G. (eds), Performance Practices and Process. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Heddon, D. (2008) Autobiography and Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Schmidt, T. (2008) ‘Vena Amoris’ in Live Art Almanac. London: Live Art Development Agency.
Dixon, S. (2007) Digital Performance. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Arends, B. and Slater, V. (eds) (2005) Talking Back to Science: Art, Science and the Personal. London: Wellcome Trust.
Millard, R. (2004) ‘On the Scent’ in The New Statesman.
Chalmers, J. and Chaudhuri, U. (2004) ‘Sniff Art’ in TDR/The Drama Review, 48(2), pp. 76–80.
Hyde, A. (2004) ‘On the Scent’ in New York Arts Magazine, May issue.
Singh, S. (2003) ‘A Sense of Wonder’ in New Scientist, 177(2384), 1 March 2003.
Paris, H. and Hill, L. (2005) ‘One to One’ in We Love You: Reflections on Audiences. London: Goethe Institute.
Paris, H., Hill, L. and Bhalla, U. (2004) ‘On the Scent’ in Arends, B. and Slater, V. (eds) Talking Back to Science: Art, Science and The Personal. London: The Wellcome Trust.
Paris, H. and Hill, L. (2003) ‘On the Scent’ in Performance Research: On Smell. London: Routledge.
Paris, H. (2002) ‘One to One: Lone Journeys’ in Goodman, L. and de Gay, J. (eds) Languages of Theatre Shaped by Women. Bristol: Intellect.
Paris, H. (2002) ‘Crossing Wires, Shifting Boundaries’ in Bailes, S. and Derno, M. (eds) Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, Issue 26. NYU: New York.
Paris, H. (2002) ‘Ontology of the Olfactory’ in Tessera. University of Montreal: Montreal.
Paris, H. (2000) ‘Vena Amoris’ in Live Art Magazine. Nottingham: NTU Press.
Hill, L. and Paris, H. (1998) ‘I Never Go Anywhere I Can’t Drive Myself’ in Performance Research, On Place, Vol. 3, No. 2. London: Routledge.
Goodman, L. and de Gay, J. (eds) (2000) The Routledge Reader in Politics and Performance. London: Routledge.
Ayres, R. (2000) ‘Body Language’ in Contemporary Visual Arts Magazine, Issue 27, February.
Goodman, L. (1999) Sexuality in Performance: Replaying Gender in Theatre and Culture. London: Routledge.
Loveless, R. and Goodman, L. (1999) ‘New Media Performance: The Next Frontier’, in Alsopp, R. and DelaHunta, S. (eds), Performance Research. London: Routledge.
Adshead-Lansdale, J. (1998) in Goodman, L. and de Gay, J. (eds), The Routledge Reader in Gender and Performance. London: Routledge.