Леслеа Ньюман: Жизнь, творчество и борьба за справедливость.

American author, editor, and feminist

Lesléa Newman (born November 5, 1955, in Brooklyn, New York City) is an American author, editor, and feminist best known for the children's book Heather Has Two Mommies. Four of her young adult novels have been finalists for the Lambda Literary Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature, making her one of the most celebrated authors in the category.

Newman was born as Leslie Newman to Jewish parents in New York City in 1955. She developed her pen name by combining her birth name with her Hebrew name, Leah. She started writing poems when she was 8 to cope with her sadness over her family moving from Brooklyn to Long Island. Newman began writing more seriously as a teenager by participating in poetry contests sponsored by Seventeen magazine. She was voted "Class Wit" in high school. In 1977, Newman spend some time living on Kibbutz Ga'aton in Israel. She attended ulpan, worked on a farm, and volunteered at the children's house. She later visited again as part of a PJ Library program for children's authors. Newman studied education and poetics at the University of Vermont and Naropa Institute, respectively. She was mentored by Allen Ginsberg in her poetry program. She has cited Ginsberg and poet Grace Paley as two of her greatest influences. While she has written poetry, prose, and nonfiction, she says that poetry has always been her first love as a writer. Her relationship with her parents was strained as a teenager and throughout her early adulthood. Upon moving out, she had very little contact with them for decades, in part because of their "loud and clear" expectation for her to have a traditional heterosexual marriage. She and her parents reconciled after her mother had a health crisis that left her hospitalized for 10 days. Newman stayed until her mother was well enough to be discharged, after which point the two "could[n't] remember what [they] had ever fought about." After her release, the two maintained a close relationship. They called daily and visited frequently. She was her mother's primary caregiver in the months before her death. Shortly before dying, her mother gave her permission to write about the experience on the condition that "I'll never have to read it." After her mother's death from bladder cancer and COPD, she published a poetry collection about her, titled I Carry My Mother. Newman stayed with her father for several weeks after her mother's death, as he struggled to take care of himself. Her father died five years later, after a year in an assisted living facility. There was no clear cause of death, and he had been given a clean bill of health just a week prior. Newman believes that it was his grief that killed him. Newman's commitment to social justice has brought together her Jewish and lesbian identities.

Good Enough to Eat: A Novel. Firebrand Books. 1986. Fat Chance. Livewire. 1994. Jailbait. Delacorte Press. 2005.

In Every Laugh a Tear: A Novel. New Victoria Publishers. 1992. The Reluctant Daughter. Bold Strokes Books. 2009.

A Letter to Harvey Milk: Short Stories. University of Wisconsin Press. 1988. Secrets: Short Stories. New Victoria Publishers. 1990. Every Woman's Dream: Short Fiction. New Victoria Publishers. 1994. Out of the Closet and Nothing to Wear. University of California. 1997. Girls Will be Girls: A Novella and Short Stories. Alyson Books. 2000. She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not: Romantic Fiction. Alyson Books. 2002. The Best Short Stories of Leslea Newman. Alyson Books. 2003.

SomeBody to Love: A Guide to Loving the Body You Have. Third Side Press. 1991. Eating Our Hearts Out: Personal Accounts of Women's Relationship to Food. Crossing Press. March 1, 1993. The Femme Mystique. Alyson Books. June 1, 1995. Write from the Heart: Inspiration and Exercises for Women who Want to Write. Ten Speed Press. 2003.