The Art, and empathy, of Brooklyn author Leslie Jamison
For Leslie Jamison, the written word is a safe and risky place.
“So much of writing that has felt alive and electric is because I grant myself permission to write about what’s obsessing me,” the author of the best-selling “The Empathy Exams” said during a recent interview in the living room of her Brooklyn apartment.
At age 30, Jamison has achieved commercial success not through dystopian fiction or visions of the afterlife, but through a collection of poetic, painfully searching essays about violence, sex, illness, self-esteem and self-expression. “The Empathy Exams,” published by the Minneapolis-based Graywolf Press, has caught on almost entirely through strong reviews and word of mouth.