Leslie B. Neustadt was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. She received her B.A. in History from the University of Rochester and her J.D. from Temple University School of Law in 1976. A former Assistant Attorney General for the state of New York, she retired from that office following a long and rewarding career. She began writing in the warm embrace of womanwords, a peer writing group founded by Marilyn Day in the Capital Region of New York.

She is a board member of The International Women's Writing Guild and a member of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild, where she created an award-winning community of Jewish Writers reading series in the Capital Region.

Leslie’s writing and art is illuminated by her Jewish background, commitment to social justice and gender equality, and her experiences as a woman, daughter, wife, mother and cancer patient. Her poems explore the challenges she’s faced living with serious health problems including a rare form of incurable blood cancer and amyloidosis, as well as other chronic illnesses. She writes openly about her experiences as an incest survivor. 

Her poems and essays have appeared in a variety of literary journals and publications including Akros Review, Cure, West Trade Review, Blood and Thunder, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, Poetica, and Workers Write: Tales from the Courtroom. She has been published in several anthologies including 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium (Ashland Poetry Press), Peer Glass (Hudson Valley Writers Guild), Mentor’s Bouquet (Finishing Line Press), The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry (Bloomsbury Press), and the anthology Veils, Halos and Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women.

About Leslie’s writing, author Natalie Reid has said, “Leslie Neustadt is a gift. Her raw-boned, unvarnished humanity and quest for forgiveness—of both herself and others—resonate throughout the journey on which she takes us. Her poems, at once delicate and compelling, teach us to 'surrender shame' and 'sense true north' in the unmapped territories of our lives.”

Leslie lives with her husband, Dr. Gary Kronick, in Niskayuna, New York. They are the parents of two adult sons, and are proud grandparents.