Helen Benedict’s mission in both her fiction and her journalism is to examine the personal consequences of social injustice, whether in the context of colonialism, violence against women, or modern warfare and the global refugee crises that result from it. She began her career writing articles and several books about rape, including Virgin or Vamp, a critical look at the press coverage of sex crimes. A professorship at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism enabled her to give more time to fiction, her first love; her novels have spotlighted the experiences of the impoverished and dispossessed in situations ranging from British prisons (A World Like This) and American slums (Bad Angel ) to remote African islands (The Edge of Eden) and, most recently, a Greek refugee camp (The Good Deed ). Benedict continues to write nonfiction on matters she considers of pressing public import; in 2022, her collaboration with Syrian writer Eyad Awwadawnan, Map of Hope and Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece, was published. Among the classes she teaches at Columbia is a course on journalism and social justice.