Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

CHQ&A

On today's episode guest interviewer David Griffith, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, speaks with Alexandria Marzano-Lesnovich, author of The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir, winner of the 2018 Chautauqua Prize. Part reportage and part memoir, The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir follows a young law student through her early career as she digs into both her own past, and the past of a convicted murderer. In a book 10 years in the making, Marzano-Lesnevich shows how the law is more personal than we would like to believe, creating a “gripping” story of “great importance.” Chautauqua readers called it “an extraordinary memoir” that is “brave and intimate.”

A 2014 National Endowment for the Arts fellow, Marzano-Lesnevich has received a Rona Jaffe Award and has twice been a fellow at both MacDowell and Yaddo. Alexandria’s essays appear in The New York Times, Oxford American, and the anthologies True Crime and Waveform: Twenty-first Century Essays by Women, as well as many other publications.

Alexandria received The Chautauqua Prize in a public presentation on Friday, Aug. 3.

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich's Aug. 3 presentation in the Hall of Philosophy:

• Video and audio: online.chq.org/…
• Coverage in The Chautauquan Daily: chqdaily.com/…