Lesley M. M. Blume

Lesley M. M. Blume is an author, columnist, and journalist.

Born in New York City, Blume attended Williams College and Oxford University. She was granted a Herchel Smith Fellowship for graduate work at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. As a journalist, she began her career as an off-air reporter for ABC News' "Nightline" with Ted Koppel, the "Jordan Times" in Amman, and Cronkite Productions. Now an editor and columnist at the The Huffington Post, her work has also appeared in many other publications, from "Slate" to "Vogue".

Blume's first book, "Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters", was released by Knopf in July 2006.

A novel about the daughter of a world-famous concert pianist growing up in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, "Cornelia" was a loosely autobiographical work. Blume's own mother was a concert pianist, and Blume created character sketches based on the colorful people in her mother's coterie. "Cornelia" was chosen as one of the "Best Children's Books of 2007" and a book of Outstanding Merit by the prestigious Bank Street College of Education, and selected as one of the “Best of the Best Books of 2006” by the Chicago Public Library. It is a Scholastic bookfair bestseller.

Her critically-acclaimed second book, "The Rising Star of Rusty Nail", was released by Knopf in June 2007. According to Blume's website, the story fictionalizes her own mother's experience as a small-town piano prodigy on the road to fame. In a starred review, Booklist said that "Blume offers a story that is as rich as it is delicious."

Her third book, titled "Tennyson", was released in January 2008, and is about a "ruined, elite Depression-era family in Louisiana's plantation country." Critics lauded Blume's "brilliant, poetic writing" (Chicago Tribune) and placed her in the same category as Southern writers Eudora Welty, Truman Capote, and Flannery O'Connor (Publisher's Weekly, The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books). Tennyson was the subject of an unprecedented 15-minute interview with Good Morning America's Robin Roberts, who was raised in the Gulf Coast region depicted in the book.

Blume and her husband live in Greenwich Village.

External links

* [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lesley-m-m-blume: Lesley M. M. Blume at "The Huffington Post"]
* [http://www.lesleymmblume.com/ Author's website: lesleymmblume.com]
* [http://www.powells.com/kidsqa/blume.html Interview with Powells Bookstores]
* [http://www.scholastic.com/bookfairs/books/fb_detail.asp?bid=548&pid=el&src=el_friends Video feature for Scholastic Book Fairs]
* [http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4351816&affil=wftv Blume's Interview with GMA's Robin Roberts]
* [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/25/qa-with-lesley-mm-blum_n_93271.html Blume's interview about TENNYSON with "The New York Times"' Liesl Schillinger]
* [http://www.americansuperstarmag.com/publishing/Feb07/Lesley_MM_Blume.php Blume Lives Inside Her Imagination (Interview in "American Superstar Magazine")]
* [http://misserinmarie.blogspot.com/2006/12/interview-lesley-m-m-blume.html Miss Erin Interview with Lesley]
* [http://slayground.livejournal.com/154155.html Interview with Lesley M. M. Blume]
* [http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A2YC4KOTPM6O6X Lesley M. M. Blume's Amazon Blog and Profile Page]