Helen Simpson (born 1957) is an English novelist and short story writer.
She was born in Bristol, in the West of England, and grew up first in Wealdstone then in a suburb of Croydon where she went to a girls' school.
Her first collection, Four Bare Legs in a Bed and Other Stories, 1990, won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and was followed by a second collection, Dear George, in 1995.
Her most recent story collections are: Constitutional (2005), renamed In the Driver's Seat for its US publication; In-Flight Entertainment (2010); and Cockfosters (2015).
Many of her stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio, including Café Society and Hurrah for the Hols read by Tamsin Greig and abridged and produced by Amber Barnfather.