Helen Borten

Borten worked across radio journalist, writer and illustrator. This article rests on 13 published texts and 2 scholarly references drawn from named institutional registers. Every statement below returns to a source shown in the evidence panel; where the record is silent or divided, the article says so instead of resolving it.

Helen Borten was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father, a jeweler who had fallen into financial difficulty due to the Great Depression, abandoned the family on the day of her birth. He re-entered her life when she was eight years old. Borten attended the Philadelphia Museum College of Art on a full scholarship, and intended to become a painter. She described her first few years after art school as "trudging [her] portfolio around NYC from art director to art director," which resulted in work as a freelance illustrator for book jackets, album covers, and greeting cards.

In 1989, Borten moved from children's literature to a career in broadcast journalism. She began volunteering at the public radio station WNYC in New York City, where she worked with Leonard Lopate on his weekly program New York and Company. She was quickly hired on as an assistant producer at WNYC, creating award-winning work for the station over the course of two years before losing her job during staff-wide layoffs. Borten went freelance from then on, building a national career as a reporter and producer. Her work was presented by National Public Radio (NPR), Monitor Radio, and Crossroads.

Between 1994 and 2004 Borten created a sprawling documentary series titled A Sense of Place, which covered a wide variety of topics over its three seasons and 43 parts. It was inspired by a six-week cross-country road trip she took with her son Laurence in 1987. The first 13 parts were broadcast nationally during the summer of 1997. The Times described Borten's approach to the series as "poking her tape recorder into odd and overlooked corners of the American landscape." She made episodes on the lives of sideshow performers, agricultural workers, and Akwesasne Mohawk ironworkers, among many other subjects, and profiled larger-than-life figures like writer Tom McGuane, blues singer Diamond Teeth Mary, and composer Conlon Nancarrow. The series was edited by Borten herself, and was initially funded using $157000 in grant awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the National Endowment for the Arts. A second round of grants from CPB and the New York State Council on the Arts put more than $230,000 toward expanding the series into further seasons. Season 2 of A Sense of Place was distributed by Public Radio International (PRI) in 2001, followed by Season 3 in 2004.

Helen Borten continued writing into her eighties. In 2016, she told Publishers Weekly that she was working on a nonfiction book called Dark Victories: A Murder Case, the Terrorist Scare and Lies in the Name of Justice. She also described working on an unpublished memoir.

Helen Borten married shortly after finishing art school, and had two children before the marriage ended in divorce. She moved to New York City and raised her sons, Peter and Laurence, as a single mother. Borten is a longtime resident of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where she lived in the same apartment for more than 40 years. She has expressed a great love for her neighborhood, saying, "there is no such thing as a boring walk in this neighborhood. I enjoy the electricity and the street life and the diversity".

Helen Borten is recorded with the occupation writer. Established in Bibliothèque nationale de France under 16781629g. Recorded as radio journalist, writer and illustrator. Established in Library of Congress under n50043792.