Leslie Margolin

Leslie Margolin has been teaching counseling, sexuality, and writing at The University of Iowa for over twenty-five years. Before that he was a social worker in psychiatric hospitals, including Bellevue in New York, where he saw, as a routine part of his day, the poorest and most unhappy people in America. He entered academia in part as a way of escaping these realities, which is probably why he began writing fiction. His books include Goodness Personified (1994), Under the Cover of Kindness ...See more

Leslie Margolin has been teaching counseling, sexuality, and writing at The University of Iowa for over twenty-five years. Before that he was a social worker in psychiatric hospitals, including Bellevue in New York, where he saw, as a routine part of his day, the poorest and most unhappy people in America. He entered academia in part as a way of escaping these realities, which is probably why he began writing fiction. His books include Goodness Personified (1994), Under the Cover of Kindness (1997), Murderess! (1999), Damaged (2002), and The Adulteress (2006). The latter received a starred review from Kirkus who described it as "a tour de force of compassion and understanding." In addition to books, he's published over thirty academic papers on topics such as psychiatry, sexuality, and social deviance. The title of his first paper is "Unwelcome Patients: Where Can They Find Asylum" (1978) and his most recent, "When a Slap Is Not Just a Slap: The Construction of Normal Violence in Psychiatric Treatment" (2012). The inspiration for his new novel Reborn Again comes from his unsuccessful efforts to become a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in the 1970s, in particular, his recollection of how strangely erotic and insular those kinds of relationships could become. Margolin is married with two adult children and one grandchild. See less