Helen Joy Davidman (1915-1960) was an American poet and writer. She earned a master’s degree from Columbia University in English literature at age 20 in 1935 and won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 1938 as well as the Russell Loines Award for Poetry in 1939 for her book of poems, Letter to a Comrade. As a young woman, Davidman was struck by the economic inequality in the United States and became a member of the American Communist Party. From the late 1930s through the mid-1940s, Davidman wrote for the communist New Masses, was a screenwriter for MGM, and published her first novel, Anya (1940). In 1942 she married William Lindsay Gresham in the Music Room at Hillcrest House, Marian MacDowell's home. Following their divorce and her conversion from atheism to Christianity, Davidman moved to England.
In England, Davidman published her most well-known work, Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments in 1954 with a preface by C.S. Lewis, creator of The Chronicles of Narnia series. Davidman and Lewis married in 1956, and remained together until Davidman’s tragic death from bone cancer in 1960. Their relationship was chronicled in the 1993 BBC film Shadowlands. Davidman resided at MacDowell four times between 1938 and 1942.
