Ariel S. Leve

Ariel S. Leve (born January 24, 1968) is an American writer. An award-winning journalist and columnist, she was a senior writer for the Sunday Times Magazine in London for over ten years. Her memoir An Abbreviated Life was published by HarperCollins in 2016to widespread critical acclaim and was described by The New York Timesas "mesmerizing".

Ariel Leve was born in New York City and grew up with her mother, a poet, in Manhattan. At age five she began traveling to Southeast Asia, where she spent part of the year living in Bangkok, Thailand, with her father. Her early life is the subject of An Abbreviated Life.

From October 2005 to January 2010 Leve wrote a weekly column under the title "Cassandra" for the Sunday Times Magazine. Prior to that, the column ran in The Guardian under the title "Half Empty". The Cassandra Chronicles was published in the UK in August 2009 by Portobello Books, and in the US by Harper Perennial under the title It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me. Leve's television pilot of It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me was optioned by Cineflix Studios.

Leve's work has appeared frequently in The Guardian. She has contributed to The New York Times, Esquire, The FT Magazine,Vogue (UK), Granta, the Evening Standard (UK), Elle, Marie Claire, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, The Jewish Chronicle, The New York Observer, Psychologies, and other publications.

Feature articles by Leve have covered the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, women who guard the women on Death Row, and a series of features on veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Examples of other cover subjects include the Amish and how they discourage the younger generation from leaving the fold; the story of Iraq war veteran Tyler Ziegel and his wife Renee, one year after his return from Iraq, and the toll it took on their marriage; US Marines who have been wounded and the reconstructive surgery they are receiving; demystifying the Chelsea Hotel; a look at the anger management business; a polemic on the importance of listening; the love story of Steve McQueen and his widow, Barbara; what science can tell us about ourselves and how much we really want to know; a profile of Stan Brock, a penniless Brit who is working to solve the US health care crisis; and a cover story which examined what happens to unidentified bodies in Britain told through a six-month investigation tracing the identity of an unknown and unmourned man named Andrew Smith.

Among others, Leve has profiled Mike Nichols, Martin Scorsese, Arthur Miller, Bill Nighy, Tom Cruise, Dan Rather, Quentin Tarantino, Tim Burton, Mickey Rourke, Richard Pryor, Elton John, Christopher Walken, Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Edward Norton, Toni Morrison, Oliver Sacks and John Irving. A recent cover story for Esquire magazine was on Liev Schreiber.

From January 2010 until February 2011, Leve wrote "The Fussy Eater" column which appeared in the Observer Food Monthly.

She has been shortlisted for the British Press Awards three times: for Interviewer of the Year (2005 and 2010), and for Feature Writer of the Year in 2008. Leve was named Feature Writer of the Year by the Magazine Design and Journalism Awards in 2008.

Leve's first book, It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me (HarperCollins) (2010) was a collection of her long-running and popular "Cassandra” columns which appeared in the The Sunday Times Magazine and offer a humorous bleak perspective of life. It was described by Joan Rivers as "An original and funny voice…. Insightful and sharp. Ariel Leve is the love child of David Sedaris and Fran Leibowitz.”

Leve’s second book, 1963: The Year of the Revolution (HarperCollins) (2013) is co-authored by Robin Morgan recounts the kinetic story of the twelve months that witnessed a demographic power shift—the rise of the Youth Quake movement, a cultural transformation through music, fashion, politics, and the arts. Leve and Morgan detail how, for the first time in history, youth became a commercial and cultural force with the power to command the attention of government and religion and shape society. An oral history the book includes interviews with Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Mary Quant, Patti Boyd, Andrew Loog Oldham, Neil Sedaka, Carly Simon and others.

Leve's third book, An Abbreviated Life, (HarperCollins) was published in June 2016. A memoir about the "turbulent time she endured as the only child of an unstable poet for a mother and a beloved but largely absent father," it "explores the consequences of a psychologically harrowing childhood as she seeks refuge from the past and recovers what was lost." Described as "a candid rendering of pain and survival," by Kirkus Reviews, the author Richard Ford wrote that An Abbreviated Life adds a harrowing chapter to the great tragi-comedy called “We Don’t Get To Choose Our Parents.” Ariel Leve’s extremely readable memoir is, at its heart, a story about surviving childhood—a trick we must all perform. Even in its raw extremes, her story is a universal one.” The BBC recommended the book as "raw and powerful...an unsentimental tale, both cautionary and heartening.”

It was described by the New York Times as, "Mesmerizing... A portrait of something familiar gone wildly, tragically awry.” And ELLE magazine wrote, “In the company of captivating memoirists Mary Karr and Alexandra Fuller…from acclaimed journalist Ariel Leve, it chronicles Leve’s dismal childhood under the primary care of her riveting, glamorous, intellectual, and ultimately incredibly destructive mother.”

The Guardian Journalist, Jon Ronson, interviewed Leve and remarked that An Abbreviated Life was "Riveting….evokes with clarity the emotional turmoil of being subjected to the constant needs of a narcissistic parent.”

• 101 Damnations: The Humorists' Tour of Personal Hells, pp. 271–273 (Michael J. Rosen, Editor, Thomas Dunne Books, 2002) ISBN 0-312-28480-2
• The Cassandra Chronicles (Portobello Books, UK, 2009) ISBN 978-1-84627-203-5
• It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me (Harper Perennial, April, 2010) ISBN 978-0-06-186459-9, ISBN 0-06-186459-5
• 1963: The Year of the Revolution co-authored with Robin Morgan (HarperCollins, November 2013) ISBN 9780062120458
• An Abbreviated Life (HarperCollins, June 2016 - UK July 2016) ISBN 9780062269454

• https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061864599/it-could-be-worse-you-could-be-me
• http://ariel-leve.com/books/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/books/review-in-an-abbreviated-life-ariel-leve-escapes-her-mommie-dearest.html?_r=4
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/02/ariel-leve-i-had-to-write-this-book-in-order-to-be-free