Lesley Stern

Lesley Stern (1950-2021) was born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and wrote across, and through, a mélange of genres, including fiction, memoir, history, and criticism. Her last book was the memoir Diary of a Detour (2020), which chronicled her experience of living with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. She was also the author of The Smoking Book, The Scorsese Connection, and Dead and Alive: The Body as Cinematic Thing, and co-editor of Falling For You: Essays on Cinema and Performance. She taught in a number of universities around the globe including in Zimbabwe, Glasgow, and New South Wales, before landing in California. She was Professor Emerita of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego.