Nathan Leslie

Van Boyle

A man's life, told through reverse chronology. Death to birth.
The reverse chronology transforms the reading experience into an archaeological excavation, revealing how childhood trauma and social abandonment compound across a lifetime to produce a tragedy that appears, in retrospect, devastatingly inevitable.
— Susan Smith Nash

The Invisible Hand

Within these pages you will find strange and caustic stories of wayward, eccentric and obstinate fathers. Told with an eye towards askew details, Leslie’s collection builds upon his reputation as a master of the short story.

Hurry Up And Relax

From self-appointed cops, to dinosaur erotica writing gurus, within these pages you will discover the pressing need to Hurry Up and Relax!
Those ideas—not only human connection, but the questions of Who am I? and What am I doing with my life? are at the heart of this collection.
— CL Bledsoe

Night Sweat

A story teller by nature, it rings true through his verse giving readers a glimpse into the common aspects of life that readers so often experience. "Night Sweat" is an expertly crafted book of work, a fine addition to any collection.
A story teller by nature, it rings true through his verse giving readers a glimpse into the common aspects of life that readers so often experience.
— Midwest Book Review

The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice

A bizarre, peripatetic upbringing that develops in this child a unique way of seeing and reacting to the world that sets him apart from other children.
The ending implies that we have a choice in the matter — that we can choose Tommy's fate. Leslie only guides us through part of his childhood, and then it's up to us to determine what happens to him from there.
— Nicole Kline

Three Men

These stories are packed with character, rather than action. The stories are slow burners, with men who each creep towards their own revelations.
Reading Three Men by Nathan Leslie is so immersive, it is almost like living three lives.
— Amelia White

Root and Shoot

Vivid, bizarre, and hilarious, each individual piece of short fiction forms a mosaic of the everyday and the extraordinary.
Nathan Leslie has perfected his craft over scores of stories and years of writing. The stories in Root and Shoot fit together like a novel.
— Charles Rammelkamp

Sibs

Often gritty and vivid, we see siblings bond, scrap, and everything in between. Many of these intense stories revolve around childhood and the stresses that siblings must overcome.
From tight-knit to at-war and set in different corners of America, Leslie encapsulates the family dynamic across the country on various levels, making the stories easily relatable.
— Brooke Granquist

Madre

"Leslie has a poet's keenness for words, their metaphorical resonance, and this is evident in his spot-on titles. A good title is like a symbol, capturing the essence of a narrative, its implications."
Throughout the stories, motherhood is seen as a good thing, against which the female characters measure themselves and toward which they are moving, as if for personal fulfillment, sometimes blindly, sometimes deliberately.
— Charles Rammelkamp

Believers

Leslie's intricate stories delve into the often odd behaviors of snake handlers and voodoo specialists, mystical new age preachers, agnostics and hermits, prophets and jazz junkies, and born-again tapestry collectors.

Reverse Negative

A reverse negative is a photographic image in negative light, which also appears literally reversed. In a sense, it may be a double removal from the "reality" of the photograph.

Drivers

Drivers makes a mark with it's simple, relevant themes and the whisper, faintly heard, of the lonely American highway, folding in on itself the million dreams of all the drivers with their hands tightly gripping the wheel.
Nathan has woven his characters and stories into that most American of ideals–the freedom the automobile gives us, the freedom to drive away from our lives.
— Jason Sanford

Rants and Raves

Rants and Raves offers nothing less than a portrait of hell, a picture of an America about to implode

A Cold Glass of Milk

The stream of consciousness method lends a feel of genuine, talking to a buddy communication, rather than the neatly trimmed, formal dialogue of standard fiction.
Recent Works