Helen Halva lives in rural (well, becoming less rural) Wake County, North Carolina. Born in North Carolina, she grew up in New York, returned to North Carolina for her college education at Duke University, and has since lived in Washington state, upstate New York, and Minnesota prior to returning to North Carolina.
She has a degree in math and has worked at Boeing Aircraft, IBM, and the North Carolina Partnership for Children. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Slavic literature at UNC. Besides reading, traveling, and listening to music, she loves to sew and play with her three cats. Her husband discovered WCPE on the radio in 1979, soon after they had moved here from Minnesota, and she has been listening to it ever since.