Leslie says she did everything late in life, including getting her degree in English Literature from UCLA at age thirty-one. Before she started writing, she raised two children, ran a mechanical engineering business with her husband, took care of her aging mother, and dreamed of retirement when she could write full-time. She currently lives in San Diego and—in addition to writing—she enjoys sailing, hiking, and reading.
In this episode Leslie Johansen Nack and I discuss: Why she leaned into fiction for this project as opposed to writing a biography. Her research process and how she chose which scenes to fictionalize. How she balanced writing about the public and private personas of her characters.