CV
AWARDS
Winner, Millie Award, given by city of Mill Valley, California for lifetime achievement in the literary arts, 2016.
Winner, 2009 Maggie Award for Best Feature Article in a consumer publication, given by Western Publishing Association, for “The Last Empire: Can the world survive China’s rush to emulate the American way of life?”, Mother Jones Magazine, Jan/Feb 2008.
Winner, 2008 Society of Professional Journalists Northern California chapter Award for Outstanding Explanatory Reporting, Print, for “The Last Empire: Can the world survive China’s rush to emulate the American way of life?”, Mother Jones Magazine, Jan/Feb 2008.
Third Place, Society of Environmental Journalists Award for Outstanding Explanatory Reporting, Print, for “The Last Empire: Can the world survive China’s rush to emulate the American way of life?”, Mother Jones Magazine, Jan/Feb 2008. The citation states:
With a writing style that is at times rollicking and evocative and at other times providing lucid explanations of complex connections, Leslie reports on the environmental devastation behind China’s economic boom. He alternates thoroughly researched passages — on water pollution, world-leading greenhouse gas emissions and other impacts — with descriptions of the scenes and characters encountered during a wild ride across the countryside with his madcap Chinese driver and guide. The story is hard to put down. Answers the question, ‘What would you get by crossing Hunter S. Thompson with Bill McKibben and sending him to China?’”
Winner, 2006 Drunken Boat Panliterary Award in Nonfiction for “Lisa’s Shoe,” a narrative nonfiction short story. http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/index.html.
Finalist, 2006 Northern California Book Award in Nonfiction for Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment. http://poetryflash.org/NCBA.06.html.
Deep Water named “one of the top science books of the year” by Discover Magazine.
Named San Francisco Public Library Laureate, 2006.
Winner, 2002 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for Deep Water. The citation states,
Jacques Leslie’s work in progress about dams around the world persuasively argues that water will be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th: an increasingly scarce but crucial natural resource that is ‘the prize’ on a global battlefield. It’s a struggle that involves every possible issue— economic globalization, international politics, the clash of cultures,
global warming, agricultural policy and conservation. Through the personal and professional experiences of an Indian activist, an American anthropologist, and [an Australian river manager], Leslie explores and elucidates this complex material and makes it intelligible in elegant, beautiful prose.
Finalist, 2001 John B. Oakes Award in Distinguished Environmental Journalism for “Running Dry: What Happens When the World No Longer Has Enough Freshwater?” published in Harper’s Magazine July 2000.
The Mark: A War Correspondent’s Memoir of Vietnam and Cambodia named “one of the top censored books of 1995” by the 1996 Project Censored Yearbook. Pulitzer Prize nomination, Los Angeles Times, for foreign correspondence (India), 1975.
Winner, Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award for best newspaper foreign correspondence, 1973.
Winner, Overseas Press Club citation, 1973, “for incisive, consistently well-researched coverage of Vietnam and the Vietcong.”
Pulitzer Prize Nomination, Los Angeles Times, for foreign correspondence (Vietnam), 1973.
BOOKS:
Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, September 2005 (hardback); Picador, November 2006 (paperback).
The Mark: A War Correspondent’s Memoir of Vietnam and Cambodia, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1995.
E-BOOKS:
A Deluge of Consequences, published by World Policy Journal, 2013.
ANTHOLOGIES:
“The Age of Consequences: A Short History of Dams” in Water Consciousness, AlterNet Books, 2008.
“Running Dry: What Happens When the World No Longer Has Enough Freshwater? ” in The Best American Science Writing 2001, Ecco Press.
“MUDroom” in CyberReader, Victor J. Vitanza, ed., 1996, Allyn & Bacon.
MAGAZINES:
Articles published in Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, The New Republic, Orion, Wired, Men’s Journal, OnEarth, Newsweek, Amazon Kindle Singles, Sierra, Washington Monthly, Columbia Journalism Review, Washington Journalism Review, Parenting, Earth Island
Journal, Reader’s Digest, Zyzzyva, and many other publications. Contributing Writer, Wired Magazine, 1993-2002.
NEWSPAPERS:
Los Angeles Times contributing opinion writer, 2017-.
Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent, 1971-1977. Stationed in Saigon from January 1972 to July 1973; Phnom Penh, July 1973 to December 1973; Washington, D.C., January 1974 to July 1974; chief of New Delhi bureau, August 1974 to September 1975; Madrid, October 1975 to May 1976; chief of Hong Kong
bureau, June 1976 to April 1977.
Summer Intern at Washington Post, 1967, and stringer for the Post from Yale, 1967-1968.
OTHER JOURNALISM EXPERIENCE:
Chief trainer, a course in journalism basics sponsored by Indochina Media Memorial Foundation for 15 journalists from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, in Bangkok, Thailand, May-June 1994.
EDUCATION:
Yale-China fellow, 1968-70. Tutor in English, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1968-70.
Yale University, B.A., departmental honors in American Studies, 1968. Vice chairman and weekly columnist for Yale Daily News, 1967-1968.