Maggie Helwig – författare

Maggie Helwig's stunning British debut is an extraordinary war novel, a poignant and gripping story about the ripples that carry on long after the fighting is over, and about two people kept apart by history, ethics and human frailty. Daniel is a war correspondent in Bosnia, a loner and a truthteller, up to a point, careless with everything except his sources. Lili is an interpreter, based in Paris, careful and meticulous. But when she finds herself working for the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, fails to declare her fragile relationship with Daniel.Between Mountains is a compelling novel of immediacy and power, about love and language, truth and lies, war crimes and the weight of history - with a vividly evoked and frighteningly real supporting cast of war criminals, lawyers, refugees and journalists.

Selected as the 2012 Title for One Book Toronto A girl faints in the Toronto subway. Her friends are taken to the hospital with unexplained rashes; they complain about a funny smell in the subway. Swarms of police arrive, and then the hazmat team. Panic ripples through the city, and words like poisoning and terrorism become airborne. Soon, people are collapsing all over the city in subways and streetcars and malls, always prompted, they say, by some unidentifiable odour. Alex was witness to this first episode. He's a photographer: of injuries and deaths, for his job at the hospital, and of life, in his evening explorations of every nook and cranny of the city. Alex is a diabetic, now facing the very real possibility of losing his sight, and he's determined to create a permanent vision of his city through his camera lens. As he rushes to take advantage of his dying sight, he encounters an old girlfriend -- the one who shattered his heart in the eighties, while she was fighting for abortion rights and social justice and he was battling his body's chemical demons.But now Susie-Paul is fighting her own crisis: her schizophrenic brother has been missing for months, and the streets of Toronto are more hostile than ever. Maggie Helwig, author of the critically lauded Between Mountains, has fashioned a novel not of bold actions but of small gestures, showing how easy and gentle is the slide into paranoia, and how enormous and terrifying is the slide into love. This is a remarkable novel: romantically and politically charged, utterly convincing in its portrait of our individual and societal instability, and steadfast in its faith in redemption.

WINNER OF THE 2025 TORONTO BOOK AWARD"Striking, elegant." – Publishers Weekly, ★ STARRED ReviewAn activist priest provides sanctuary for an encampment of unhoused people in her churchyardThe housing crisis plaguing major urban centres has sent countless people into the streets. In spring 2022, some of them found their way to the yard beside the Anglican church in Toronto’s Kensington Market, where Maggie Helwig is the priest. They pitched tents, formed an encampment, and settled in. Known as an outspoken social justice activist, Helwig has spent the last three years getting to know the residents and fighting tooth and nail to allow them to stay, battling various authorities that want to clear the yard and keep the results of the housing crisis out of sight and out of mind. Encampment tells the story of Helwig’s life-long activism as preparation for her fight to keep her churchyard open to people needing a home. More importantly, it introduces us to the Artist, to Jeff, and to Robin: their lives, their challenges, their humanity. It confronts our society’s callousness in allowing so many to go unhoused and demands, by bringing their stories to the fore, that we begin to respond with compassion and grace.

An activist priest’s sermons remind us that one of the first social justice frameworks was the Bible.When lifelong activist and celebrated author Maggie Helwig became an Anglican priest, she brought both her hard-earned social justice wisdom and her incomparable literary prowess to the role. Where the homily – the weekly act of taking biblical texts and making them speak to one's time, place, and community – can easily become a rote exercise, Helwig takes the language and narrative very seriously. The homilies in this book, selected from those presented to her congregation over the last five years, talk about the Bible, and by extension, the world, through both an activist and a literary lens.‘Instructions for the End of the World’ is how Helwig describes the gospels. As we live through the climate crisis and the rise of fascism around the world, Helwig’s responses to the ancient texts feel urgent and necessary, reminders of hope and meaning during a time of great anxiety and fear. Whether you’re religious or not, these homilies offer a basis for resistance and resources for building communities that may sustain us all.