HELEN FREMONT, 35, attended Wellesley College and Boston University law school. Upon graduation, she joined the Peace Corps and taught English and science in Lesotho, Southern Africa. Five years ago, while working full-time as a public defender in Boston, she began taking graduate fiction workshops, and in 1991 completed her M.F.A. at Warren Wilson College. She is in the process of leaving her job to work on a novel she began last year at the Cummington Community of the Arts. Her short fiction has appeared in The Harvard Review and Phoebe.