Leslie Schwartz
Publications
Essays and short stories
Winning Writers
She could tell by his tone that she was about to get a lesson. Sometimes she didn’t mind it. Raymond had sailed halfway around the world before they met, and the experience had been seminal for him. Once he told her that since then nothing else had ever measured up. She would tease him about her being the runner up. But after years of it, she stopped saying anything.
Dark Matter Women Witnessing
The day I arrived in Los Angeles from San Francisco in 1991, I was sad and fully unprepared for how weird a place it was. I spent years—too many—at war with L.A. for all the regular reasons: traffic, pollution, shootings, police helicopters dive-bombing our house at night.
Pithead Chapel - A Gate Around The Bell
- The eating of human flesh by a human being.
- The eating of the flesh of an animal by another animal of its own kind.
- The solution to the human overpopulation problem.
- The acquisition and absorption of the smaller, more delicate, and possibly more beautiful, by the larger, more aggressive, and quite likely, more corrupt.
from Salon
I was 6 months sober when I spent my first night in jail. It changed me — by showing me what hope feels like…
from Eclectica
Meth made its way into jail via two vaginal routes. The first route along the royal highway was by subterfuge and smuggling. An inmate, either processing through or returning from court, with very strong kegel muscles, eluded the deputies when asked to squat on the ground and cough…
from Brevity
In 2014, after 14 years clean and sober, I relapsed into drug and alcohol addiction, and nearly destroyed my life…
from Literary Hub
On January 12, 2014, I was sentenced to 90 days in Century Regional Detention Facility—Los Angeles County jail—for charges related to driving drunk. I’d committed my offenses while in a 414-day relapse from double-digit years of sobriety. It was one of the most harrowing and holy experiences of my life….
Poets & Writers
Mary Oliver used to walk in the woods with a notebook. Walking so inspired her that she kept pens in the trees so if an idea or thought came to her, she’d be able to stop and write it down…
Podcast
from Writers on Writing
Memoirist Leslie Schwartz talks with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett on Writers on Writing, KUCI-FM in Irvine
Sept 12, 2018
Leslie Schwartz, author of the memoir The Lost Chapters talks with Barbara on the show about her time in jail, treatment of prisoners, and how this experience became a book, and how reading books kept her going during these 90 days.
from ALOUD
Marinating in Ghetto Air: Writing and Transformation at Homeboy Industries
July 23, 2008
A conversation between Leslie Schwartz, Father Gregory Boyle, Hector Verdugo and Agustin Lizama.
Recorded live in Los Angeles Central Library’s Mark Taper Auditorium as part of the award-winning ALOUD at Central Library speaker series presented by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles.
Featuring readings by Homeboy poets, on the deep impact creative writing can have on liberating formerly involved gang members
from Jewish Womens Theatre
Stories from a Prison Cell
Meth made its way into jail via two vaginal routes. The first route along the royal highway was by subterfuge and smuggling. An inmate, either processing through or returning from court, with very strong kegel muscles, eluded the deputies when asked to squat on the ground and cough…
Articles
Dark Matter Women Witnessing
“Leaving the Mother Country”
Salon
“My Synagogue was a Jail Cell”
Pithead Chapel
“The Gate Around the Bell”
Literary Hub
“The Books That Kept Me From Falling Apart in County Jail”
Narratively Speaking
“Mom’s Night in the Slammer”
The Rumpus
“The Forgotten Women”
