Leslie What
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Leslie What (born Leslie Nelson, 1955) is a writer of fantasy and literary fiction and nonfiction. She began publishing in 1992 with a story for Asimov's Science Fiction. In 1999 she won the Nebula Award for The Cost of Doing Business, published in Amazing Stories. Her story collaboration with Eileen Gunn, "Nirvana High" was nominated for the 2005 Nebula Award for novelette. She has published more than 60 short stories, and her work has appeared in Parabola, Lilith Magazine, The Clackamas Review, Sci Fiction, Witpunk, Bending the Landscape, The Mammoth Book of Tales from the Road and other anthologies and magazines.
What's father was a teenage conscript who fled Stalin's Red army as Berlin was being partitioned at the end of WWII. He chose the surname "Nelson" after arriving in the United States. Her mother is a Holocaust survivor who was interned in the Riga Ghetto. The stories in her collection, The Sweet and Sour Tongue incorporate "elements of science fiction and fantasy into domestic scenes of Jewish family life."
What worked as a licensed vocational nurse and later volunteered with the Chevra kadisha– the Jewish Burial Society. She lives in Eugene, Oregon and was a contributing writer to the alternative newspaper, The Eugene Weekly. She received her MFA in Writing in 2006 at Pacific University and teaches writing at UCLA Extension in The Writers Program (http://www.uclaextension.edu/).
[edit] Bibliography
- Sweet and Sour Tongue (2000)
- Olympic Games (2004)
