A portrait of a middle-aged woman with short, gray hair, wearing a black turtleneck, standing in front of a yellow textured wall.
Cover of a book titled 'Reveries: Photography & Mortality' by Helen Ennis, with a greenish background and an orange band across the middle.
A woman stands alone on a beach near a body of water, looking out at the water with her back to the camera. The scene appears to be in black and white.

Helen Ennis

Helen Ennis brings a literary approach to writing nonfiction and specialises in biography, especially of women artists, and writing on photography. She was originally trained as a curator and has also had a career as an educator in art history. She writes monographs, essays and reviews and has published widely. Her major publications include Reveries: Photography and Mortality (2007) and Photography and Australia (2007). Her biography Margaret Michaelis: Love, loss and photography won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Nonfiction in 2006. Her most recent book, Olive Cotton: A life in photography (2019), was awarded the Nonfiction prizes in the Queensland Literary Awards (2020) and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (2021) and the 2020 Magarey Medal for Biography. Helen is currently working on a biography of Australian photographer Max Dupain. She is Emerita Professor, ANU School of Art and Design.

For the mentorship program, Helen welcomes applications from writers of non-fiction, history, art, biography, autobiography at all stages.

Book cover of Olive Cotton: A Life in Photography by Helen Ennis, featuring a black and white photo of a woman holding a camera, with bright yellow text and circles.
Multiple large rolls of metallic foil or sheet stacked in a warehouse or factory setting.