Introduction
Zoë Kate Hinde Heller (born 7 July 1965) is an English journalist and novelist. She has published three novels, Everything You Know (1999), Notes on a Scandal (2003), and The Believers (2008). Notes on a Scandal was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was made into a feature film in 2006.
Biography
Early life
Heller was born in St Pancras, north London, as the youngest of four children of Caroline (née Carter) and Lukas Heller, a successful screenwriter. Her father was a German Jewish immigrant and her mother was English and a Quaker. Her paternal grandfather was political philosopher Hermann Heller.
Her brother is screenwriter Bruno Heller. She attended Haverstock School in north London and then studied English at St Anne's College, Oxford, before going on to Columbia University, New York where she received an MA in 1988.
Career
Heller began her career in journalism, as a feature writer for the Independent on Sunday in the UK. She later returned to New York to write for Vanity Fair and then The New Yorker. She wrote a weekly column for the Sunday Times magazine in the UK, and was a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, for which she won the British Press Awards' "Columnist of the Year" in 2002. She co-wrote the screenplay for the 1991 independent film, Twenty-One.
Publications
Heller has published three novels, Everything You Know (1999), Notes on a Scandal (2003), which was one of six books shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was made into a film in 2006, and The Believers (2008). The Believers was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2010. Heller is currently writing her fourth novel.
In 2009, she donated the short story What She Did On Her Summer Vacation to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the 'Water' collection.
Personal life
In 2007, she married screenwriter Lawrence Konner in a "minimally" Jewish ceremony; they separated in 2010. Heller lives in New York with her two daughters, Lula and Frankie.