Adrian Nicole LeBlanc is an American journalist whose works focus on the marginalized members of society: adolescents living in poverty, prostitutes, women in prison, etc. She is best known for her 2003 non-fiction book Random Family. She was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship -- popularly known as the "Genius Grant" -- in 2006.
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LeBlanc grew up in a working class family in Leominster, Massachusetts. She studied at Smith College, Oxford, and Yale University. She worked for Seventeen Magazine as an editor after earning her Master's degree in Modern Literature at Oxford.
LeBlanc's first book, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx, took more than 10 years to research and write. Random Family is a nonfiction account of the struggles of two women and their family as they deal with love, drug dealers, babies and prison time in the Bronx. LeBlanc and Random Family garnered several awards and nominations. Her research methods earned her a spot among several other journalists and nonfiction writers in Robert Boynton's book, The New New Journalism.
LeBlanc has contributed to the New York Times Magazine, the Village Voice, and Esquire magazine. She currently lives in Manhattan.
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc was a Holtzbrink Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, for Spring 2009. She is a Visiting Scholar at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University 2009-2010. She will be part of the Harman Writer-in-Residence Program at Baruch College in Spring 2011.