Hello! My name is Helena and I'm a seeker & collector of stories at heart, and a writer, editor & journalist in practice.
For the past five years, I’ve served as the editor for Newport Life Magazine, a publication covering the lifestyle and culture of the place I call home: Newport County, Rhode Island. Overseeing the curation and production of this publication, along with cultivating relationships with freelancers and community members, while also continuing to write features and profiles, is a dream job.
Newport is known for many things, but to me it is first and foremost home; Aquidneck Island is where I grew up, where I returned to after college, and where I have worked as a journalist and in local media ever since. Being able to share Newport’s stories — from the gritty to the gilded, the quirky to the bougie, the nautical to the nuanced — is what I love to do and hope to do for many years to come.
To learn more about Newport Life, visit our website and follow along on social media. To read my editor’s notes — which I still first write by hand — click here. And for a full archive of what I’ve written lately, visit my Authory page.
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Before becoming editor of Newport Life, I spent several years freelancing for a number of publications in and around Rhode Island, including: Art New England, Edible Rhody, Newport Life Magazine, Newport This Week, Providence Business News, South County Life Magazine and The Newport Daily News.
From June 2015 to April 2018, I was the Features Editor for the Arts & Living section of The Independent newspaper, a weekly in South County, Rhode Island. And for seven years, from March 2011 to April 2018, I was a copy editor, page designer, and staff writer for The Newport Daily News, at the time a sister publication to The Independent and my hometown paper.
In addition to my journalistic work, I sometimes write essays that are a bit more personal and which veer from the usual AP style. One such piece, “The Ascent,” was published in the water-themed Issue No. 18 of Chautauqua Literary Journal (2021). From summer 2020 to summer 2022, I pursued and earned an MFA in creative writing, and was a student of the Newport MFA, a low-residency creative writing program through Salve Regina University, where I explored all things literary nonfiction.
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When not working (or on deadline), you can find me people-watching from my balcony, sipping a cappuccino at my favorite Italian cafe, walking around town with my earbuds in, snapping photos with my favorite filter, sitting at the bar with friends, lounging at the beach on summer weekends, or perhaps detouring to see the sunset over the harbor.
Want to chat? Have questions? Or a project to collaborate on? Send me a note via: helena [dot] touhey [at] gmail [dot] com