Hey…I’m Leslie!

LESLIE A. LINDSAY

Leslie is a former child/adolescent psychiatric R.N. at the Mayo Clinic and has attended writing classes and workshops at Northwestern University, Story Studio Chicago, Corporeal Writing, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Kenyon Writing Workshop. Her work has been supported by Ragdale and Vermont Studio Center. Leslie resides in the Chicago area with her husband and basset hound, and two college-age daughters.

Leslie’s writing has been nominated for the Best American Short Stories. She has contributed to The Millions, The Rumpus, DASH Literary, North American Review (NAR), Brevity, Allium, CRAFT Literary, LiteraryHub, The Florida Review, Autofocus, Fractured Literary, Psychology Today, Poets & Writers, Hippocampus Magazine, MER Literary, Motherwell, Manifest-Station, Mutha Magazine, Literary Mama, The Smart Set, The Nervous Breakdown, Pithead Chapel, Mutha Magazine, Literary Mama, The Agapanthus Collective, A Door = Jar, Cleaver Magazine (both craft and prose), The Awakening, Semicolon Literary Magazine, Ruminate’s The Waking, and many other publications.

Leslie has continued her education at Northwestern University and the University of Madison-Wisconsin, Story Studio Chicago, and has attended webinars with Creative Nonfiction Magazine (CNF Magazine) featuring Sonja Livingston, Allison K. Williams, Clinton Crockett Peters, Dinty W. Moore, and Chelsea Biondolillo, as well as the NYC New School of Journalism & English, has participated in book discussions and author presentations with The Center For Fiction, Master Class sessions with Penguin Random House’s Author University, Kathy Fish’s The Art of Flash, Corporeal Writing with Lidia Yuknavitch, poetry with Francine Ringold of Nimrod International and Diana Khoi Nguyen’s Tin House Intensive Craft Series: Visual Poetry. Leslie attended the 2023 Kenyon’s Summer Writer’s Workshop working with Victoria Chang in poetry and the Story Studio Chicago Storyboard Workshop with Maya Shanbhag Lang working in memoir. Leslie is a member of Metro Chicago’s premier writing group, Off Campus Writer’s Workshop (OCWW), The Author’s Guild, and has attended retreats and workshops at the Ragdale Foundation and Vermont Studio Center.

Leslie is the author of the award-winning/#1 Amazon bestseller special needs/parenting/communications disorder book, SPEAKING OF APRAXIA (Woodbine House, 2020), now in its 2nd edition. She has appeared on Language During Mealtime with Becca Eisenberg, CCC-SLP Speechie Side Up with Venita Litvack, CCC-SLP and chatted with Dr. Erik Raj’s graduate level courses about educating future speech-language pathologists. She has also collaborated with various top-ranking pediatric SLPs in her research for SPEAKING OF APRAXIA. The updated, 2nd edition was published by Penguin Random House Audio, narrated by the author.

Previously, Leslie Lindsay was creator and host of the award-winning author interview series, “Always with a Book.” In 2013, Leslie was named “One of the most influential book reviewers” by Jane Friedman, ranked in the Top 1% of all GoodReads Reviewers and has conducted over 700 warm, inquisitive conversations with authors as wide-ranging as Robert Kolker and Mary Kubica to Helen Phillips and Mary Beth Keane, making her website a go-to for book lovers world-wide. She also snaps artistic photos of book covers and circulates on social media.

Expertise

Author Interviews

Warm, lively, and generous conversations with contemporary bestselling and debut authors about inspiration, process, writing tips, more. and shared in literary journals. I am on the masthead at Hippocampus Magazine, which means a good majority of these interviews are on CNF, poetry, and memoir. I am frequently in collaboration with publicists at top-notch publishing houses & PR firms.

Book Reviews

Balanced and thoughtful book reviews–ranging from literary fiction to psychological thrillers, historical fiction, children’s literature, and memoir.

Sampling of featured authors: Emma Donoghue, Vince Granata, Dani Shapiro, Lidia Yuknavitch, Mary Kubica, Thomas Christopher Greene, Jill Bialosky, Kristin Hannah, Naima Coster, Mary Beth Keane, Chris Bohjalian, Elizabeth Brundage, Meredith Hall, Sylvia True, Caroline Leavitt, Cynthia Swanson, T. Greenwood, Shari Lapena, Zibby Owens, Christina Baker Kline, Fiona Davis, Laird Hunt, Julia Fine, Andromeda Romano-Lax, Sonja Livingston, Angie Kim, Erica Bauermeister, Jan Eliasberg, Anna Solomon, Maya Shanbhag Lang, Caitlin Myer, Gilly Macmillan, Sally Hepworth, Julia Heaberlin, Ursula Hegi, Lynda Cohen Loigman, Diane Chamberlain, Marion Winik, Ladee Hubbard, Jessica Strawser, Samantha Downing, Heather Gudenkauf, Erika Swyler, Lauren Acampora. *Sample to indicate wide-range of styles, themes, & genres, not to promote favoritism.

Book Photographer

Artistic images of book covers with natural elements, bringing the story to life, generating pre-publication publicity for select titles.

Writer/Author

SPEAKING OF APRXIA: A Parents’ Guide to Childhood Apraxia of Speech, 2nd edition Woodbine House, 2020 and Penguin Random House Audio June 2021 read by the author. Contributor to BECOMING REAL: Women Reclaim the Power of the Imagined Through Specutive Nonfiction, anthology edited by Laraine Herring (Pact Press/Regal House Publishing, October 2024). Various essays on craft, home, and motherhood published online and in print.

Voice Actor/Narrator

Narrator/Author of SPEAKING OF APRAXIA: A Parents’ Guide to Childhood Apraxia of Speech Published by Penguin Random House audio, directed by Allen Towbin, and produced by Karen Dziekonski. Recorded at ARU in Chicago, IL.

Nature Photographer

Landcapes, crumbling architecture, studies in light and moss, refraction, water, and more. Many works featured in literary journals. First Place Winner of Adair County, Kentucky Photography Contest 2024.