Recovering (Jamison) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1983
• Raised—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard, M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop; Ph.D. Yale University
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York, New York,


Leslie Jamison is an American novelist and essayist. She is the author of the novel The Gin Closet (2010), an essay collection The Empathy Exams (2014), and The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath (2018). Jamison also directs the non-fiction concentration in writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts.

Early life
Jamison was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Her parents are Joanne Leslie, a nutritionist and former professor of public health, and Dean Jamison, an economist and global health researcher. Leslie Jamison is the niece of clinical psychologist and writer Kay Redfield Jamison. Leslie grew up with two older brothers. Her parents divorced when she was 11, after which she lived with her mother.

Jamison attended Harvard College, where she majored in English,; her senior thesis dealt with incest in the work of William Faulkner. While an undergraduate, she won the Edward Eager Memorial Fund prize in creative writing, an award also won by classmate, writer Uzodimna Iweala. She was a member of the college literary magazine The Advocate and social club The Signet Society.

After Harvard, Jamison received an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and later her Ph.D. in English literature from Yale University. Her 2016 dissertation, "The Recovered: Addiction and Sincerity in 20th Century American Literature" became the basis for her 2018 book, The Recovering.

Writing
Jamison's first novel, The Gin Closet, follows a young New Yorker searching for an aunt she has never met, eventually finding her living in a trailer and drinking herself to death. The two form a tenuous bond, each trying to save the other's life.

The Empathy Exams, Jamison's second work, an essay collection, shot quickly to #11 on the New York Times bestseller list. Olivia Lang writing in the Times, said, "It’s hard to imagine a stronger, more thoughtful voice emerging this year."

The author's third book, The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, was described by Publishers Weekly as an "unsparing and luminous autobiographical study of alcoholism." It combines Jamison's memoir of her own alcoholism and others' (some famous), with a focus on recovery.

Jamison's work has been published in Best New American Voices 2008, A Public Space, and Black Warrior Review.

Teaching
In the fall of 2015, Jamison joined the faculty at Columbia University's School of the Arts. She is assistant professor and director of the non-fiction concentration in writing.

Personal life
Jamison lives in Brooklyn, New York City, with her husband, the writer Charles Bock, a daughter, and  stepdaughter. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/16/2018.)