People like Leslie Jamison

Leslie Jamison (born 1983) is an American novelist and essayist. She is the author of the 2010 novel The Gin Closet and the 2014 essay collection The Empathy Exams. Jamison also directs the non-fiction concentration in writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts.

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