Helpless is Jessica Knoll’s fourth novel. Her three previous novels, Luckiest Girl Alive (2015), The Favorite Sister (2019), and Bright Young Women (2023), all explore themes of gendered expectations, modern femininity, and violence. Knoll grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and attended the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. She then attended college at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where she majored in English. In Helpless, Faye’s college is never named but she mentions that “technically my alma mater is a women’s college that merged with the men’s campus down the hill around the time the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, and so everyone refers to it as the colleges” (4). This detail alludes to Knoll’s own college experience; she also received a writing scholarship as an undergraduate student. In the “Acknowledgements” section, Knoll states that she began writing Helpless after the sudden death of her own college mentor. 

After graduating, Knoll moved to New York City and began her career in the magazine industry. She worked at Parenting magazine, and then at Popular Science and Self. Knoll eventually began working at Cosmopolitan magazine, where she built a successful career and eventually became a senior editor. Knoll wrote her first novel, Luckiest Girl Alive, while working at Cosmopolitan. It was published in 2015 and became a bestseller. While promoting the novel, Knoll was repeatedly asked where she drew her inspiration, and she did not initially disclose that she was a survivor of sexual violence. In March 2016, Knoll published an essay publicly revealing that she had lived through an experience very similar to what is depicted in the novel, and that many of the novel’s details were drawn from her own experiences. Knoll was moved to tell her own history after realizing that many of her readers had also experienced sexual violence (The Story of Luckiest Girl Alive — Jessica Knoll).

When she disclosed her experience with sexual assault, Knoll also shared that she hid this experience for years, and it was not until she described the events to a therapist when she was in her 20s that she understood that she was not to blame for what happened to her. Knoll has stated that many of the experiences depicted in her novel reflect the aftermath of her own assault: She was bullied by other students after the assault and was made to feel responsible. Knoll’s experience producing a fictional work of art based on lived experience may echo Faye’s decision to write an episode of television based on her real-life relationship with Henry. Knoll published her second novel, The Favorite Sister, in 2019. She also wrote the screenplay and worked as the producer for the film adaptation of Luckiest Girl Alive, which premiered on Netflix in 2022, starring Mila Kunis.