ALOHA!

Another year has transpired, a year in which the key words of my literary life have been:

LOSS, RESISTANCE, and COMMUNITY.

I unexpectedly lost my best friend this year, my bestie since we were both 10. Her name is Cathy Colman, a poet, who, in January, became a refugee of the Pacific Palisades fire. While her rented cottage miraculously survived, her landlord evicted her. She was heartbroken by all of it. I spent hours arranging for all of the items in her home to be detoxified, packed up and safely sent to a warehouse for her to have in her next home. I went to LA to stay with her in March. She came up to San Francisco in April to visit me and we listened to the music we had always loved – Joni Mitchell, Dylan, Nina Simon, old Beatle songs. A week later, she passed away in a Santa Monica hotel. She was here, broken but here; then she was gone. We had a beautiful memorial in LA in June on her birthday. Her LA friend Elena and I organized a Memorial Poetry Tribute at Beyond Baroque this past weekend where many who cherished her spoke and read her poems. No one knew me like Cathy – my brilliant, funny, generous friend. Honestly, her loss and the grief have subsumed my year in many ways. I had hoped to complete my second collection this year, but how could I? My heart, too, was broken.

RESISTANCE: I organized a task force at The Writers Grotto to create a statement of solidarity, outraged that the current DC administration had cancelled NEA and NEH grants and reversed progress made in the art world (and everywhere) in regard to diversity and inclusion. I will go to bat, get arrested, whatever it takes, to fight for our freedom of speech, freedom of creative expression, and the uplifting of marginalized voices and the diversity of voices central to who we are as a nation.  The writers and artists are our culture creators!  In addition to participating in every march, I read at a People vs Project 2025 rally at Civic Plaza, for which I wrote a love poem to libraries. 

COMMUNITY: I threw myself into engagement with The Writers Grotto, a Bay Area writers’ non-profit organization and community with 170 active members – published poets, fiction writers, journalists, memoirists, and filmmakers. My involvement with them has been life-changing. I am not alone anymore! In fact, starting this month, I will be on their Board of Directors. I hope to help initiate a free mentoring program matching experienced published writers with emerging writers; and support the writing voices of our youth through partnerships with California Poets in the Schools and my own summer creative writing camps. In addition, I am co-facilitating the Grotto Short Fiction Group and curating Grotto readings in partnership with Telegraph Hill Books in North Beach. The community has opened up many opportunities for myself and my work. At the same time, it feels very meaningful, after 36+ years of teaching and editing, as well as publishing, to be giving back – lending my support to other writers and to the cause of writing itself. Candles in the Dark: Stories of Resilience & Joy for the Holidays is the latest Grotto event I helped curate.

OUR YOUTH: I selected nine students from my Ripe Fruit Writing summer camps this year to read their work as part of San Francisco’s annual LitCrawl. Standing room only. The audience moved to tears. The title of the event was: DEAR FUTURE: LETTERS FROM TWEENS & TEENS. They wrote eloquently about a future they fear may suffocate them.

READINGS: I gave readings from THE MAN WITH EIGHT PAIRS OF LEGS at The Grotto and at Salesforce, and read work from my next collection-in-progress at a Stanford reunion in the Sierras.

PANEL AT AWP (ASSOCIATED WRITERS PROGRAMS) in March in LA:  I organized and moderated a panel called THIEVES OR TRANSFORMERS: HOW MUCH OF FICTION IS FICTION for a huge room of over 200 curious writers. The annual AWP conference is always amazing! It is the quintessential gathering of literary writers of all kinds, from all places, facing a variety of challenges and triumphs. The 2026 conference will be in Baltimore. I will be there accompanied by my niece, a celebrity (and super talented) spoken-word artist now living in Brooklyn.

WORKSHOPS:A remarkable, compassionate social worker at the California Youth Defense Center (CYDC) contacted me out of the blue and asked me to give a workshop at their Fall Conference in SF, which I did. I read numerous sample reports written for judges, district attorneys, and juries about boys under 25 who had suffered more trauma as children than I could imagine anyone could even survive and who had committed a crime. My workshop, THE HUMAN BEHIND THE FILE -Writing Stories That Matter, was to help social workers and attorneys craft stories to humanize their clients in order to optimize their chances of getting a second chance. I found myself in a totally unfamiliar setting among social workers from across the state and realized how valuable my expertise was for them! Very moving and satisfying.

WRITING RETREATS: I went to Playa in Southern Oregon as I do every year, this time both to write and heal in solitude.

MENTORSHIPS:I had the pleasure of mentoring two MFA students (poets) in the MFA Creative Writing Program at West Connecticut State University, where I had been an invited writer-in-residence the previous year. They both graduated this past June with flying colors!

SUBMISSIONS: My novella, “Toltec on Haight,” and my stories, “Dark to Themselves” and “Motherlode” are currently submitted to literary reviews and contests. Fingers crossed!
 

UPCOMING EVENTS FOR 2026:

January 11: Stories on Stage Davis. A professional actor will be reading/performing the two shortest stories in A Man with Eight Pairs of Legs, “City of Angels” and “The Hermit’s Tattoo.”

If you are in the Sacramento region, please join us and grab a beer (it’s at a brewery!) 

The reading takes place from 4-6pm at the Sudwerk Brewing Company in Davis.

March 14: Telegraph Hill Books Reading (including my book) hosted by The Grotto.

May 15: Panel & Reading “WHO AM I REALLY?: Secrets & Denial.” I am curating this event and will be reading new work from my next collection-in-progress.

AND LET’S NOT FORGET…. THE MAN WITH EIGHT PAIRS OF LEGS!!!
Purchase

History and memory crosscut through The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs in a gorgeous weave. These are marvelous, stirring stories, sometimes sexy, sometimes harrowing, somehow both timeless and timely. Campbell writes with great depth, patience, wisdom, and beauty.

Anthony Doerr, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for All the Light You Cannot See

If you haven’t bought the book, please buy a copy! If you have bought the book and loved it, buy another one for a friend as a gift! Sarabande Books still has a few more copies!! Purchase

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

May it be a year of resistance, creation and community!

💜 Leslie