A resident of Kodiak, Alaska, Leslie Leyland Fields is a wife, mother of six, commercial fisher, world traveler, writer, editor, and teacher of creative nonfiction in Seattle Pacific University's Master of Fine Arts Program. For more information, visit www.leslie-leyland-fields.com.

Leslie is the author of seven books including The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God (Waterbrook Press, div. of Random House) Surprise Child (Waterbrook Press, div. of Random House), Surviving the Island of Grace (Thomas Dunne), Out on the Deep Blue: Women, Men and the Oceans They Fish (St. Martin's), The Entangling Net: Alaska's Commercial Fishing Women Tell Their Lives (Univ. of Illinois Press), and The Water Under Fish (Trout Creek Press).

Her books have been reviewed in the (London) Times Literary Supplement, The Chicago Tribune, Sports Illustrated for Women, The Portland Oregonian, The Seattle Times, Women and Health, the Utne Reader, Oregon Review, and many others.

Her essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, Orion, Image: Art, Faith, Mystery, Best Essays Northwest, Christianity Today, It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters, On Nature: Great Writers on the Great Outdoors, A Mile in Her Boots: Women Who Work in the Wild, America and the Sea: A Maritime History, and many others. Her poetry has appeared in The Seattle Review, the Bellingham Review, the Northern Review, Patches of Godlight: Father Tim's Favorite Quotes, and many more