Helen Fremont is an award-winning author and essayist. She wrote the critically-acclaimed, national best-selling book, After Long Silence. Her second memoir, The Escape Artist, was selected as an “Editor’s Choice” new book by The New York Times in 2020. Her latest book, Outside the Lines will be released October 3, 2025.
Featured Book: Outside the Lines
Available for Pre-Order. This item will be released on October 3, 2025
A Tale of Love and Complexity
Outside the Lines is the poignant and intricate story of a secret love affair between two women set in the 1980s. Maddie, a photojournalist from an aristocratic New England family, is ten years older, married, and has two children, while the author, Helen, the daughter of Eastern European immigrants, is an attorney working at a public defender’s office in Boston. Their paths cross in a writing workshop, where the narratives they craft reveal shared histories of family secrets and a deep, albeit perplexing, connection to the Holocaust.
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Advanced Praise for Outside the Lines
“The intersection of heartbreak and humor: that’s the sweet spot that Helen Fremont nails with such devastating effect in her new memoir “Outside the Lines.”
“By turns deeply funny and deeply sad, Helen Fremont has written a moving and engrossing love story.”
“Long before words like “adulting” or “throuple” entered contemporary parlance, Helen Fremont was a young lawyer negotiating romance (in an era still largely unenlightened about same-sex love) and forming an identity (despite a shaky understanding of her past). Enter a love affair with a married friend and a devastating health diagnosis to create an atypical story of responsibility, ambition, and love. I started this book when I had other things to do, but then couldn’t put it down, so read in a single sitting, completely absorbed by the heartbreaking story, the whip-smart writing, and the funny, fearless author.”
“Over four heartrending, transformative years, Helen Fremont lives through all the big questions—love, family, art, caretaking, death, self-knowledge—as an impossible situation just keeps getting more impossible. Where there are no answers and no solutions, Fremont offers tenderness, self-deprecating humor, wisdom, and most powerfully, a deep and abiding love that honors not just Maddie, but the power of seeing and being seen by our own beloveds.”
“In Outside the Lines best-selling memoirist Helen Fremont delivers a profound history lesson as she deftly weaves the many ways the past confines our ability to love in the present. What were the risks and rewards of queer life outside of the constraints of youth, heterosexual marriage, and illness. I felt I had entered a new genre of memoir, one filled with sizzling passion and need as queer bodies discover real desire for the first time. Fremont makes us look back at our own histories and gives us all the permission to forgive ourselves for not knowing how to love but doing it anyway.”
“Helen Fremont has written a rich, moving story of coming out: as a lesbian in the conservative 1980s; as a daughter starting to resist parental demands; and as a woman learning the complexities of intimacy and mortality”.
The Escape Artist
Selected by People Magazine as a “Best New Book“ in 2020.
New York Times listed as “Editor’s Choice“ in 2020.
Winner of the Audiophile Earphone Award.
Selected by BookPage as a “Reader’s Choice” best book of 2020.
A luminous family memoir from the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller, After Long Silence, lauded as “mesmerizing” (The Washington Post Book World), “extraordinary” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), and “a triumphant work of art” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
In the tradition of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home or George Hodgman’s Bettyville, Fremont writes with wit and candor about growing up in a household held together by a powerful glue: secrets. Her parents, profoundly affected by their memories of the Holocaust, pass on to both Helen and her older sister a penchant for keeping their lives neatly, even obsessively compartmentalized, and a zealous determination to protect themselves from what they see as danger from the outside world.
Selected by BookPage as one of the “Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of 2020” (starred review)
Read the New York Times Book Review.
Read the Washington Post Book Review.
Winner of Audiofile Earphones Award.
After Long Silence
“To this day, I don’t even know what my mother’s real name is.” Helen Fremont was raised as a Roman Catholic. It wasn’t until she was an adult, practicing law in Boston, that she discovered her parents were Jewish – Holocaust survivors living invented lives. Not even their names were their own. In this powerful memoir, Helen Fremont delves into the secrets that held her family in a bond of silence for more than four decades, recounting with heartbreaking clarity a remarkable tale of survival, as vivid as fiction but with the resonance of truth.
News and Events
Brunch with Us: A Reading and Celebration for Writers
Sunday, September 28, 2025
Join Friends of Writers for Brunch with Us: A Reading and Celebration to raise scholarships for writers. The brunch features readings, a curated silent auction, and good company, all in celebration of poet, teacher, and publisher and FOW founding member Martha Rhodes whose work shapes and sustains our literary community. Featured readings by Martha Rhodes, Joan Aleshire, Helen Fremont, and Ellen Bryant Voigt. The fundraiser will be held at the lovely Trident Bookstore located in Boston's historic Back Bay, one of the last independent bookstores in the city. All are welcome, we look forward to seeing you there. TICKET LINK IN OUR BIO! Can’t make it in person? You can still support us by donating a ticket or making a direct gift. Every contribution helps sustain our mission to support adult writers for years to come.
Join Friends of Writers for Brunch with Us: A Reading and Celebration to raise scholarships for writers. The brunch features readings, a curated silent auction, and good company, all in celebration of poet, teacher, and publisher and FOW founding member Martha Rhodes whose work shapes and sustains our literary community. Featured readings by Martha Rhodes, Joan Aleshire, Helen Fremont, and Ellen Bryant Voigt. The fundraiser will be held at the lovely Trident Bookstore located in Boston’s historic Back Bay, one of the last independent bookstores in the city. All are welcome, we look forward to seeing you there. TICKET LINK to follow…
Can’t make it in person? You can still support us by donating a ticket or making a direct gift. Every contribution helps sustain our mission to support adult writers for years to come.
FOW Reading at Trident Book Store, Boston
Sunday, September 28, 2025
Friends of Writers Brunch and Reading at Trident Book Store, Boston, MA
SAVE THE DATE: Friends of Writers invites you to “Brunch With Us” Sunday, September 28th 11 – 1 pm at Trident Book Store, one of Boston’s last independent bookstores.
At the brunch, we will be honoring Martha Rhodes, one of FOW’s founders, and featuring readings by Martha, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Joan Aleshire, and Helen Fremont. More information about brunch, auction, and live music to come.
We hope to see you there!
Helen Fremont & Diane Simmons in conversation at East End Books, Boston, MA
April 5, 2025
6:00 pm Book Event at East End Books, Boston Seaport, MA
Join Helen Fremont and author Diane Simmons as they discuss Diane’s novel “Days of Thunder,” reissued by Red Hen Press.
