Leslie Monsour was born in Hollywood, California, but grew up in Mexico City, Chicago, and Panama.  She was educated at Scripps College in Claremont, California, Canal Zone College in Panama, and the University of Colorado in Boulder, where she received her degree in English Literature. She has been a reference librarian at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, a news reporter for Pacifica Radio, and a research consultant for documentary film production companies.  She has also taught Spanish poetry at Florence Avenue Middle School, and has been an instructor for the U.C.L.A. Extension Writers' Program, and at special workshops for the alumnae of Scripps College. Her work has appeared in the Story Line Press anthology, A Formal Feeling Comes, Poems in Forms by Contemporary Women, and numerous journals, including The Birmingham Poetry Review, Hellas, The Lyric, The Plum Review, Fourteen Hills,  and the July, 1999, issue of Poetry. In 1998 Robert Barth published her collection, Earth's Beauty, Desire, & Loss, and, in 1999, Michael Peich of the Aralia Press at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania, published a letterpress edition of her poems, entitled, Indelibility. Publications scheduled for this year include an anthology from The University of Iowa Press, entitled Visiting Emily: Contemporary Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Emily Dickinson, as well as the journals, The Dark Horse, The Formalist, and The Edge City Review. Between poems, Leslie continues to work on her first novel, which she has completed several times.  She resides in the Hollywood Hills with her husband and two sons.