Photo Credit: Jennifer Jacobson/City of Vancouver Book Award 2021
“We All Need to Eat’ is now out as an audiobook on Audible, read by Aven Shore. Listen here
Leslie’s writing blends patience and violence…We All Need to Eat is a work of precision. As the stories layer on top of each other, Alex Leslie open many of urban life’s paradoxes… Leslie’s sometimes hallucinatory writing style teases out the murky threshold where the conscious self meets the body.”
-Canadian Notes and Queries
I am a writer born on unceded Musqueam territory in what’s now called Vancouver, British Columbia. My heritage is English and Ashzenaki Jewish from Ukraine. I write fiction, prose poetry, and things in between.
Updates
My poem ‘Postcard from English Bay’ from Vancouver for Beginners was made into two video poems by Emily Carr school for the arts students – I am thrilled that those video poems are being projected from March 31 2024 to April 1 2025 onto the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen at Kingsway and Broadway in Vancouver, curated by grunt gallery; read more here. Thanks to Fiona Tinwei Lam who coordinated the video poem project. Go watch!!
Recent publications: “Propane, Propane” (short story) in Isele Magazine, and “Pineapple” (short story) in Yolk Magazine.
Bio
I’ve published four books and one chapbook: the short story collection People Who Disappear (Freehand 2012), shortlisted for a Lambda Award for debut fiction, the prose poetry collection The things I heard about you (Nightwood 2014), the short story collection We All Need to Eat (Book*hug 2018), shortlisted for the BC Book Prize for fiction and Kobzar Prize for contributions to Ukrainian-Canadian literature, the poetry collection Vancouver for Beginners (Book*hug, 2019), winner of the Lohn Foundation’s Western Canada Jewish Book Prize and shortlisted for the City of Vancouver Book Prize, and the chapbook of microfictions 20 Objects for the New World (Nomados, 2011, out of print). I’ve recently completed my first novel.
My writing has been recognized with a CBC Literary Award for short fiction and the Dayne Ogilvie Award from the Writers Trust of Canada for LGBTQ2S+ emerging writers. My writing has been published in the US and UK by Granta and Catapult and has been anthologized in Canada in The Journey Prize anthology (Penguin/Random House), Best Canadian Stories (Biblioasis) and Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope). I’m particularly proud that my writing has been taught at universities and colleges across Canada including Emily Carr, UBC, OISE, UVic, Kwantlen and Capilano.
I’m a passionate supporter of the Canadian literary community and a proud member of the Writers Union of Canada.
To reach me:
Queries re. We All Need to Eat and Vancouver for Beginners can be sent to Book*hug press. If you want to invite me to read you can reach me at al.leslie@gmail.com or on Instagram at @thisalexleslie. I live in Vancouver.
Alex Leslie - Writing 