About Gerard Helferich
- Gerard Helferich is the author of six highly praised works of nonfiction and fiction: Hot Time: A Mystery (Arcade Publishing, 2022, published under the pen name W.H. Flint), which received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, who praised it as a "superior fiction debut"; An Unlikely Trust: Theodore Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan, and the Improbable Partnership That Remade American Business (Lyons Press, December 2017); High Cotton: Four Seasons in the Mississippi Delta (University Press of Mississippi, October 2017; Counterpoint, 2007), which won the 2008 Authors Award for nonfiction from the Mississippi Library Association;Theodore Roosevelt and the Assassin: Madness, Vengeance, and the Campaign of 1912 (Lyons Press, 2013), which was a New York Times e-book bestseller; Stone of Kings: In Search of the Lost Jade of the Maya (Lyons Press, 2011), which was selected by the American Booksellers Association as an Indie Next title; and Humboldt’s Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey That Changed the Way We See the World (Gotham Books/Penguin, 2004), which was a Discover magazine Science Bestseller.
He also publishes book reviews in the Wall Street Journal (see "Other Writings") and has contributed to the Fodor's travel guides to Mexico and Guatemala. For 19 years was on the faculty of the Columbia Publishing Course at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York, and for more than a decade he presented workshops at the San Miguel Writers Conference. He has also taught a course, "How to Edit What You Write," in the Millsaps College Community Enrichment Program in Jackson, Mississippi. Before turning to writing in 2002, he was an editor and publisher for 25 years at companies such as Doubleday, Simon & Schuster, and John Wiley & Sons.
A graduate of Swarthmore College with Distinction (Phi Beta Kappa), he grew up in Troy, New York. He lives in Jackson, Mississippi, with his wife, the writer Teresa Nicholas, author of Buryin' Daddy: Putting My Lebanese, Catholic, Southern Baptist Childhood to Rest, Willie: The Life of Willie Morris, and The Mama Chronicles: A Memoir (all from the University Press of Mississippi).