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Helen Pitt is an author and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. She works at The Sydney Morning Herald as of April 04, 2019.

Personal Life
Pitt was born in Sydney, Australia. She is a single mother to her son, Liam. Her husband, William Oliver, died of a brain tumor in July 2005.

Education
She attended Charles Sturt University in Bathurst in 1983 and acquired a Bachelor of Arts in communication.

The Sydney Morning Herald
Pitt got her first byline in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1981 when she was sixteen. As an editor on her school paper, she wrote an opinion piece on Puberty Blues for a competition The Herald was hosting. In 1990, Pitt left The Herald to go work at Bulletin with Newsweek as a feature writer. In 1988, she was appointed as the Melbourne correspondent for The Herald. This made her the youngest correspondent at The Herald. In 1995, she returned to The Herald for three years before leaving to teach in 1998. In 2010, Pitt moved back to Sydney to work for The Herald and is currently still there. She became one of their opinion editors in 2012.

Newscaster Experience
In 1992, Pitt left Bulletin and went to Paris after winning the Journalists in Europe fellowship. In France, she worked as a television reporter for Euronews.

Teaching
From 1998 to 1999 Pitt had a part-time teaching position at Macleay College. She taught new and feature writing.

Other Journalism Jobs
Pitt moved from Australia to the Untied States in 1999. She acquired a job at New York Times Digital where she was a writer for WineToday.com. She also did book reviews for the New York Times while she was there. She left in 2005 and moved to San Francisco. While in San Francisco, Pitt continued to work. She did freelance writing, mostly for magazine publications.

The House
Pitt’s first book is titled The House. It details the building of the Sydney Opera House and the people behind it. By interviewing people as a journalist and using her resources at The Herald, she was able to put together the story behind one of the most famous buildings. She used her journalist influence and practices to get the information she needed and after ten years was able to release her book. It has won her the 2018 Walkley Book Award in addition to her other journalism awards.

Literary Awards
Pitt won her first award in 1981 when she won the Sydney Herald High School Newspaper competition.

In 1984, she won a performer’s diploma in effective speaking from Trinity College of Music in London.

In 1992, she was the only Australian to be chosen for the eight-month international journalism program after winning the Journalists in Europe Foundation Award.

Pitt won the United Nations Media Peace Prize in 1996 for her report in The Herald. Her news story, The Lost Kids of Kinchela which focused on the Aboriginal Stolen Children inquiry.

In 1997, Pitt won the Austcare Media Award for her story in The Herald called In God’s Hands on East Timorese refuges.

She won the Walkley Book Award in 2018 for her first book, The House.