Dora Heldt (born Bärbel Schmidt on 10 November 1961) is a German writer. Several of her novels have reached the top of German bestselling lists, including her 2009 novel Tante Inge haut ab, which got to second place.

Biography

Schmidt was born in 1961 on the island of Sylt, the daughter of a German soldier. After training as a bookseller in Bad Godesberg and working as a representative for the German publishing house dtv Verlagsgesellschaft, she drew attention to herself under the pseudonym Dora Heldt with her novels about Christine and her idiosyncratic father Heinz. Schmidt has been an active handball player for many years. She lives with her family in Hamburg.

Writing

Schmidt has been writing under the pseudonym Dora Heldt, the name of her grandmother, starting with her first novel, Ausgeliebt (2006). The novel reached the bestseller list (35th place in January 2006), but it was only with her third book, Urlaub mit Papa, in 2008, that she achieved her breakthrough as a bestselling author. A film adaptation of the book was made in the summer of 2009 for ZDF, starring Julia Stinshoff as Christine, Lambert Hamel as Heinz, and Steffen Groth as Johann. With her novel Kein Wort zu Papa, she made it to number 1 on the bestseller list for the first time, in 2010. She reached the top of the list again with her subsequent books Bei Hitze ist es wenigstens nicht kalt (2011), Wind aus West mit starken Böen (2014), Wir sind die Guten (2017), and Drei Frauen am See (2018). In addition to writing adult novels, Schmidt has also published the young adult novel Siebenmeter für die Liebe, in 2008.

Film adaptations