“Jamison stitches together the intellectual and the emotional with the finesse of a crackerjack surgeon.” —NPR
Leslie Jamison is an extraordinarily gifted writer whose work explores the strengths and limits of our shared humanity. Her writing has been called at once “profound” and “intellectual” and then “poetic” and “philosophical.” She’s often compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, the inheritor of a great American literary tradition.
Leslie’s collection of essays, The Empathy Exams, won the 2012 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and was named one of the best books of the year by NPR, the New York Times, and Publishers Weekly. The Gin Closet, Leslie’s first book, was one of The San Francisco Chronicle’s best books of the year. In 2018, Leslie released The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, a book that seamlessly blends memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and reportage. The Recovering chronicles how we tell stories about addiction, as well as the larger history of the recovery movement. Leslie’s 2019 collection of essays, Make It Scream, Make It Burn, was met with high praise and critical acclaim. Entertainment Weekly writes, “With this brilliant new collection…Leslie Jamison affirms why she’s the essayist of the moment.”
In 2024, she released her memoir, Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, a fascinating and sometimes harrowing exploration of motherhood, art, and new love. Ashley C. Ford (New York Times bestselling author of Somebody’s Daughter) praises Splinters, writing, “These pages are so magnetizing that I wanted to race along, but forced myself to slow down enough to savor the language. No one should be this good at writing. This gorgeous book will blow you away.” Leslie also completed and published the novel Peggy in 2024, continuing the legacy of her friend and fellow author Rebecca Godfrey who passed away in 2022.
A graduate of Harvard College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Leslie also graduated with her PhD from Yale University. She teaches at the Columbia University MFA program and mentors through the PEN Prison Writing Program. She has worked—for various stints, in various points—as a baker, an office temp, a juice barista, a medical actor, and an innkeeper. She currently lives in Brooklyn.
Trinity Says
"I aspire to be Leslie Jamison when I grow up. "
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