Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison is the New York Times bestselling author of five books: two essay collections, The Empathy Exams, and Make It Scream, Make It Burn; two memoirs, The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath, and Splinters; and a novel, The Gin Closet, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award. Her sixth book, a novel called The Daughters, will be released in February 2027. The Empathy Exams, chosen as a Notable Book of 2014 and an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times, was named one of the Top 10 Books of 2014 by Publisher’s Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, Oprah, Slate, Salon, The L Magazine, and Time Out: New York. The Recovering was named the Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 by Entertainment Weekly and the best-reviewed memoir of 2018 by LitHub, and was a finalist for the American Booksellers Association Book Award. Both Make It Scream, Make It Burn and The Empathy Exams were finalists for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. A National Magazine Award finalist, Jamison is a contributing writer for The New Yorker, and her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Oxford American, A Public Space, Bookforum, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Believer. She has a PhD in English from Yale University, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and an AB from Harvard College. She has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Ucross Foundation, the Jentel Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library.
Selected Writings
The Mind-Boggling Simplicity of Learning to Say ‘No’
The New York Times, February 2024
I Didn't Want Wedding Presents. But Gifts Helped Me Survive My Divorce.
The New York Times Magazine, January 2024
A Friend Died, Her Novel Unfinished. Could I Realize Her Vision?
The New Yorker, November 2023
Since I Became Symptomatic
The New York Review of Books, March 2020
I Used to Insist I Didn't Get Angry. Not Anymore.
The New York Times Magazine, January 2018 (Audio)
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Late Writing professor Rebecca Godfrey tragically passed away in 2022 after a long battle with cancer, leaving behind an unfinished novel about the life of art heiress and gallerist Peggy Guggenheim. With the help of friend and fellow writer, Associate Professor Leslie Jamison, Peggy has now been released by Random House.
Associate Professor Leslie Jamison is set to release her next book, Splinters (Little, Brown and Company), in early 2024.
Here, we talk with Professor Leslie Jamison about empathy on the page, why she sees herself as a bowerbird writer, and how teaching influences her writing style.
White Rabbit Books recently published This Woman's Work, an essay collection that includes contributions from Professor and School of Journalism alumna Margo Jefferson and Professor Leslie Jamison.
PEN America recently announced finalists for the 2020 PEN Literary Awards, and Xuan Juliana Wang '11, Professor Leslie Jamison, and Ruchika Tomar '12 are among them. More information on their work can be found below.
Many Columbia alumni and faculty were among those recognized by NPR’s prestigious end of year list.
From the mystique and fate of an outlier blue whale; to the civil war photography of Matthew Brady; to the spooky appeal of a computer game that allows users to create virtual selves; to the museum of broken relationships in Croatia, Leslie Jamison’s new essay collection, Make It Scream, Make It Burn, is, as NPR called it “[a] heady hybrid of journalism, memoir and criticism.”
Assistant Professor Leslie Jamison moderated a discussion on climate writing as part of The Center for Fiction On America series. Jamison is the author of three nonfiction books—The Recovering The Empathy Exams, and most recently, the essay collection Make it Scream, Make it Burn—as well as a novel, The Gin Closet. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine.