Meet Leslie
Author, Speaker, Teacher
Leslie Leyland Fields is an international teacher, speaker and the multi-award winning author of fourteen books, including
*Your Story Matters: Finding, Writing and Living the Truth of Your Life
*Crossing the Waters: Following Jesus through the Storms, the Fish, the Doubt, and the Seas, which won Christianity Today's 2017 Book Award in Christian Living. (And is also available as a DVD video series here)
* Nearing a Far God: Praying the Psalms with Our Whole Selves (forthcoming).
Her other books include A Radiant Birth: Advent Readings for a Bright Season, Surviving the Island of Grace (Thomas Dunne), Forgiving Our Fathers and Mothers (Thomas Nelson). Her books have been translated into eleven languages. Her essays have appeared in Christianity Today, Books and Culture, Belief.net, The Atlantic, Orion, Best Essays, and many others earning her a number of Evangelical Press Awards. She has two books forthcoming: A Radiant Birth: Advent Readings for a Bright Season (IVP) and Nearing a Far God (Navpress).
Leslie has three graduate degrees (in English, Journalism, and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction) and has taught extensively in undergraduate and graduate programs. Her Memoir Masterclass program has over a thousand students around the world, and many of her students have gone on to publish their manuscripts, (which makes her incredibly proud!)
Since 2013 she's been leading The Harvester Island Writers’ Workshop on her family’s island in Alaska (with guest writers Ann Voskamp, Philip Yancey, Bret Lott, Luci Shaw, Jeanne Murray Walker, Paul Willis, Gina Ochsner.) She also leads the Your Story Matters Retreat each summer on Kodiak Island. Both retreat adventures are the highlight of her year!
Leslie travels and speaks on a range of topics at conferences, universities, retreats, and churches throughout the U.S. and the world. Some of her favorite places are Mongolia, Slovakia, South Africa, Moldova and France. (Her speaking schedule is here. ) When not traveling, she returns home to Kodiak Island, Alaska where she lives with her husband, Duncan. Each summer they migrate to Harvester Island where she and her family work in commercial salmon fishing.
“Just as we've been shepherded into pastures by quiet rivers and through shadowed valleys, we get to shepherd and steward these burdens, all of them, the beautiful, the brilliant, and the horrid. Through telling and writing, we have another chance to reclaim and redeem those moments. And sometimes they are redeemed simply by being faced and called out of the dark. When we can name our ghosts, they haunt us less.”
-LLF, Your Story Matters