Leigh Newman

Leigh Newman (born May 15, 1971) is an American writer and editor. Her memoir about Alaska, Still Points North, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard First Book Prize.

Newman got her B.A. from Stanford University in 1993 and her MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2006.

Newman grew up Anchorage, Alaska and Baltimore, Maryland, traveling between the two cities. She now lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two boys.

Her fiction, essays and book reviews have appeared in One Story, Tin House, The New York Times' Modern Love and The New York Times Book Review, Fiction, New York Tyrant, Vogue, O, The Oprah Magazine, Bookforum, Condé Nast Brides, Condé Nast Concierge, Travel Holiday, Ski, and Frommer’s Budget Travel. She has served as Deputy Editor and Books Editor of Oprah.com and editor-at-large for the indie press Black Balloon Publishing.

Her memoir Still Points North is the story of Newman's unconventional childhood growing up in the wilds of Alaska as her parents' marriage apart.

Newman is a visiting writer at the Sarah Lawrence M.F.A. program.

She has received fiction fellowships from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Corporation of Yaddo. In 2014, she was a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Fellow. Newman won the 2020 Terry Southern Prize awarded by The Paris Review honoring work of “humor, wit, and sprezzatura".