Leslie Brody
Leslie Brody is an author and professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Redlands. Her books include Irrepressible: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford, Red Star Sister – a memoir that won a PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Award, and her latest Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of Harriet the Spy, available December 1, 2020 from Seal Press/Hachette.
Twitter: @LeslieDBrody
Instagram: @LeslieDBrody
Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?
I wrote an essay about how the Czech film Daisies changed my life. I’d never before seen women on screen like those in Daisies: two anti-authoritarian anti-heroines, both named Marie, slumming around 60’s Prague like punk Isadora Duncans. “We’re spoiled!” they sing, meaning not so much indulged as decayed. They sleep late, skip work, tease men mercilessly, and they’re almost always eating something sweet. Read the rest the essay here.
Is there another profession you would like to try?
I’d like to play a singing lawyer on a long running TV show. That would combine all my career ambitions: musical theatre, law and politics and receiving a generous salary.
Do you collect anything? What, why and for how long?
Teapots and teacups. I have never admitted that to anyone before.
I don’t do it anymore. Early last year, as I picked a teapot that looks like a magic lamp, it began warbling through its spout in a voice like Angela Lansbury’s. Take a rest/ we’re the best/ There’s no further need to mess!!
In a sad postscript I have to admit that I almost exclusively make a single cup of tea with a teabag now. Its bewildering to hear your teapots singing.
What piece of clothing tells the most interesting story about your life?
I have a one-of-a-kind felt cloche hat completely covered with iridescent feathers that I bought in the 1970’s and wore to discos and Halloween parties, when I dressed as a surrealist cat with a bird head. At one point did I stop imagining myself to be a surrealist cat with a bird’s head? Around 1980. I packed it away in a beautiful band box where it remains today. Maybe I’m waiting for a disco revival.
What brings you great joy?
Landing on the perfect word, I’m flooded with oxytocin. Does that happen to you, too?
