ADRIAN NICOLE LEBLANC '86

Narratives Across Class: A Panel Discussion

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc is a nonfiction writer who writes like a novelist in the very best tradition of literary journalism. A prolific author of magazine and newspaper articles, many on the effects of poverty on adolescents, LeBlanc redefined immersion reporting in her first book, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx (2003). The result of a decade spent closely involved in the lives of her subjects, this 10-year odyssey stretches the very fabric of long-form nonfiction and demonstrates LeBlanc’s mastery as observer of human character. Her haunting study enables readers to inhabit the day to day life of a community in an impoverished Bronx neighborhood, revealing its inner workings and creating an intimate chronicle of urban poverty. It is an original, surprising, and unsettling work of nonfiction that helps readers see and value the humanity in even the poorest lives and to find meaning, as do LeBlanc’s subjects, in the most ordinary moments.

She is currently a visiting scholar at New York University’s School of Journalism. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Village Voice, among others. She received a MacArthur “Genius” Award in 2006.