Leslie grew up in Minnesota and St. Louis. She first attempted to write an Austen-inspired Regency-era novel as a fourteen-year-old and published poems and short stories in her high school's literary magazine. She majored in History and Literature at Harvard University and completed a Masters in English at the University of Minnesota.
In between college and graduate school, Leslie taught history, English, and creative writing at an international school in Seoul, Korea. In 2015, she moved to the D.C. area, where she taught English at a public middle school for seven years. Leslie loved giving weekly book talks on her favorite middle-grade and young-adult novels and discussing those and other books with her students.
In 2022, Leslie's chronic illnesses made it too challenging for her to continue teaching, so she established a tutoring business and worked towards her goal of becoming an author. She wrote her first YA novel that fall. Afterwards, Leslie joined SCBWI and was excited to receive the Disability Scholarship to attend the annual winter conference in New York in February 2024. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband, daughter, cat, and dog. When she's not reading or writing, she loves singing, traveling, and watching plays, musicals, and operas.
