I'm thrilled to introduce you to Leslie Lehr, whose new book, A Boob's Life, is launching on March 2nd. It delivers what the title promises—a deep dive into this female body part shaped as a unique hybrid of memoir and cultural analysis. Leslie is also a story consultant and in our interview offers great tips about how to successfully pitch your book. She is the 'go-to' for helping writers craft their query letters, which is often the key to landing that coveted publishing agent.

Leslie Lehr is a prize-winning author and story consultant. She has written the novels What a Mother Knows, Wife Goes On, and 66 Laps, and essays for the beloved New York Times "Modern Love" column and the infamous anthology, Mommy Wars. Leslie is a breast cancer survivor, the mother of two daughters, and lives in Southern California.

Her newest book A Boob’s Life, which drops on March 2nd, explores the surprising truth about women’s most popular body part with vulnerable, witty frankness and true nuggets of American culture that will resonate with everyone who has breasts – or loves them.

“Lehr’s appealing sense of humor runs throughout, as does her sharp analysis of broader social issues...”
—Publishers Weekly

“Original, thought-provoking, and with an elegant sense of humor, A Boob's Life is a must-read."
—Salma Hayek

“Thoughtful and honest. Our verdict: GET IT."
—Kirkus Reviews

KARIN GUTMAN: I love the topic of your new book! How did it occur to you to write an entire book devoted to this female body part? Do you remember the moment when the thought first occurred to you?

LESLIE LEHR: One night I got out of the shower and noticed that my boobs were crooked. I had just recovered from breast cancer and moved into my dream house. But the sight upset me so much that my husband accused me of being obsessed, as if I should be grateful to be alive and nothing else should have mattered. But it did.

Especially when we settled in to watch David Letterman’s farewell TV show, with all the celebrities visiting – and he opened with a boob joke. So much for our date.

I left a message for my doctor, then couldn’t sleep. We had just moved, so while my husband slept, I started unpacking my scrapbooks and realized I could track my whole life by my boobs. I also had fashion magazines I hadn’t had time to read yet – and one of them said boobs were “out” that year. I needed to prove I wasn’t the only one who was obsessed – and figure out how it happened. I knew immediately that this was my next book.

KARIN: How did you go about fleshing out the seed of this idea?

LESLIE: Lots of research! I started a file on every related subject I could think of. I poured over my old diaries and scrapbooks. And I interviewed a bunch of people. I originally thought of linked essays, but once I connected the dots, they told a bigger story of America.

KARIN: I know the book is a blend of research and personal narrative. How did that hybrid evolve?

LESLIE: It was necessity. I’ve written personal essays, in Mommy Wars and Modern Love. But I had something to prove here. I needed to see how – and when - history and the American culture had impacted a typical midwestern girl like me. I love research; it’s a great procrastination device. But since A Boob's Life brings us to present day, I kept updating - and it's crazy-making. My next book is a novel.

KARIN: What did you find surprising about what you discovered as you researched? And how did this shape your own thinking about your journey as a woman with breasts?

LESLIE: I realized that women are our own worst enemies. And I am just as complicit.

KARIN: I know your last published book was fiction. How was it for you to make a shift from writing fiction to personal narrative?

LESLIE: All of my novels grew from personal essays – challenges that kept me up at night. So the inspiration was the same. And I write in scenes. The challenge was switching between narrative and analysis without being heavy-handed and keeping true to the time period (from the 1960’s to now) about what I knew then versus what I understand now.

KARIN: How has the last year through Covid affected your writing practice?

LESLIE: I’ve been writing and consulting more than ever. It’s harder to separate play time and work time, but I’m very grateful.

KARIN: Was this an easy book to sell? How did you pitch it and who is the audience?

LESLIE: My agent at the time said she wasn’t interested in breasts. Which to me, meant she was in denial. But I hadn’t written a book since my novel, What A Mother Knows, and while my analytical side came back immediately after chemotherapy, my creative side did not.

My agent moved over to CAA (to rep Kamala Harris!) and did not take me with her. I wrote a crack query letter and got a new agent right away. And I had a full proposal, a relatively new requirement for memoirs. But it took her two years and 30 submissions to sell the book.

I wrote and kept updating the proposal as the political landscape evolved, from serious to funny and back. Then I went ahead and wrote the whole book. Most editors at publishing houses took the topic for granted, or didn’t see it past a magazine article. By now I already had TV interest, so I knew I wasn’t crazy. I was ready to indie publish. Then I heard back from Pegasus Books.

So getting a rave review from Publishers Weekly – who said that “women of all ages” will enjoy this book - has been a great feeling of I told you so!

KARIN: I know you are an expert at writing query letters and help a lot of writers through this process. What do you think is the most important part of pitching a book project?

LESLIE: Finding the gold, the part that keeps you excited and the part that shines in a unique way.

And not giving up.

Buy the book!

To learn more about Leslie Lehr, visit her site.

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In the summer Unlocking Your Story workshops we've been discussing the differences between fiction and nonfiction, and what each one offers as a form to share the story that you want to tell. For some writers it's an obvious inclination toward one or the other; for other writers, it's not so clear.

I had the great pleasure of talking in depth with prize-winning author, essayist and screenwriter Leslie Lehr about her point of view on this topic. As someone who writes both fiction and nonfiction, she shared openly about her own creative process and approach, which I found extremely thought-provoking. Leslie also teaches novel writing at UCLA Extension Writers' Program and is a story consultant for Truby Writers Studio. You can read the full interview below!

Leslie Lehr is a prize-winning author, essayist and screenwriter. Her new novel, What A Mother Knows, follows Wife Goes On, 66 Laps, and three nonfiction books, including Welcome to Club Mom. Her essays appear in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and anthologies such as Mommy Wars. Leslie mentors writers through private consulting and Truby's Writers Studio. A graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts with an MFA from Antioch University, she is a member of PEN, The Authors Guild, WGA, Women In Film, The Women's Leadership Council of L.A., and is a contributor to the Tarcher/Penguin Series "Now Write."

Karin: You write both fiction and nonfiction. How would you describe the difference between the two?

Leslie: With fiction, like my new novel, What A Mother Knows, every single element is designed to express an emotional truth, so you design and funnel everything for that purpose. With memoir, you are limited to reality. You can expand and compress time or include some things and not others, but it's a tricky thing. It's still your point of view, but our memories are not always reliable, nor popular. Fiction offers a structure in which to include the things that are the most important to you.

So would you say fiction is more structured or formulaic than memoir?

Not formulaic in a bad way. The best memoirs have a frame, but you're still dealing with weighing personal experience with what you learned from it. In a novel you are forced to make things up around those ideas. You have to tell a story based on a person who has a need and a desire, strong opponents, a battle, a climax and a resolution - and more things that happen in between depending on what the genre is. It all springs from your theme but doesn't explain it. Writing a novel, the reader needs to know where the characters are all the time. You need to be the camera. And if a certain element doesn't work to tell your story, it shouldn't be there. Everything needs to be carefully designed.

In memoir, you can usually take more time with internal narrative. And you have to tell the truth even if it's just your side of the truth. You can't add stuff that happened to help make your point. That said, if you have something to say, you can say it in either form.

My dad is a scientist, and he doesn't read any fiction. We've discussed this often over the years. And I've written both. I've written three fiction books, three nonfiction, screenplays, and I do a lot of personal essays. My dad writes a lot of articles, but he thinks that fiction is make-believe. I have to tell him that nonfiction - even books on science and history - is according to the statistics of that day. History changes. It also tends to be one person's point of view. So if you're trying to tell a story about an emotional event or some reality, fiction is the way I like to do it. There is a real truth you can get to in fiction that you can't always get to in non-fiction.

There are benefits to both forms, but I am having the most fun with full-length fiction. And I do use fiction as a device to explore real life even beyond the entertainment or escape value. Currently, I'm working on the script for What A Mother Knows, which is truly puzzle-making, cutting so much while keeping the meaning intact. I'm also developing a new story, based on emotional and cultural truths that I want to express. I also do manuscript consultations for Truby Writers Studio using story structure techniques that enhance memoirs as well as novels.

If someone is debating between fiction and nonfiction to tell a certain story, is there a way that they can answer that question for themselves?

That's a personal choice. In fiction, stories are better told in particular genres. But when you want to tell a certain truth, either commit to transparency or wrap it in a fictional story.

Years before I wrote What A Mother Knows, I wrote a memoir that a family member objected to so much that I decided to hold off on publishing until it felt safe for everyone. Some writers feel comfortable even when others are not comfortable - I'm just not one. I think life is challenging enough than to ask for trouble, especially when I can deal with the same issues in fiction. And sure enough, a bit of it ended up in What A Mother Knows - the emotional truth of it, anyway.

The advantage of writing fiction is that you can make up things in order to tell a story in a way that can magnify the idea that you want to explore. On the other hand, you're in competition with people making up any story, and so it has to be really good and bigger than life and yet more intimate and precise, because you're trying to tell your story. So it's a decision that you, as the writer, have to make, and be 'all in' whichever you choose.

Last year a woman from the State Library of California read all of my work for an in depth interview at Literary Orange. She pointed out that most of my work begins with a personal essay then expands into a novel. So, without being conscious of it, I've been playing with the best of both worlds.

Is it true that you always know the ending to your stories when you begin?

I always figure you can't hit the bull's eye unless you can see the target. But that's just me. I know a lot of people who don't know the ending. If you know where you're going, then you're going to design a story that makes it all logical. You want the ending to be a surprise, but it has to be a logical surprise. You know how disappointing it can be when the butler did it? All the time we put in to watching or reading something and then there's no pay-off because something came out of the blue. It has to be really synthesized to work in a certain way. I'm not saying that everyone should have an ending and stick to it. The character's journey can inspire a writer to change the ending. For me it just helps to know where I'm going. Writing a novel takes a lot of time and a lot of passion. For me, caring that much about a story typically means caring that it gets to a particular ending.

In memoir, you might not know the ending when you begin, unless you are ten years hence and have built a strong story frame. The writing can be part of the journey to a deeper understanding. It's a process of finding that transcendent meaning; it's eureka. It's having those epiphanies. And it's often cathartic. That's why it's so important to keep a pad of paper by your bed, to write things down, because it's in there. And you may think you have the ending, and then four years later you find the real ending. But it's never really an ending because you're still alive and you've got other things going on, and maybe those experiences contribute to your understanding.

To learn more about Leslie Lehr, visit leslielehr.com

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A Conversation with Leslie Lehr

A Conversation with Leslie Lehr