Helen Darville

Helen Darville first gained notoriety in Australia when, in 1994, she won a literary award for The Hand that Signed the Page, which she wrote while attending high school in Brisbane, Australia under the pseudonym, Helen Demidenko. The award was intended for autobiographical novellas describing the experiences of Australian migrants. Darville's book described the experiences of Ukrainian brothers (one of which was supposed to be Darville's father) who survive Stalinism only to become members of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen death squads and ultimately Australian citizens; however, it was entirely fabricated - Darville's father was born in Australia and her ancestry was (probably) Anglo-Saxon. The novel was, however, widely acclaimed and won various awards including the Vogel Literary Award, the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and the Miles Franklin Award (the most prestigious literary award in Australia). Darville was dismissed from her position as a reporter for the Brisbane daily, the Courier-Mail for plagiarism in 1997. She now lectures at the University of Queensland.