Lesley Arfin
Author. Writer. Totally Awesome Girl.
Biography
Lesley Arfin has been writing professionally since 2001. She graduated from Hampshire College and immediately started an internship at Vice magazine, where she then went on to write a number of articles, as well as her own column, Dear Diary.
In 2007 her book, Dear Diary, based on the column, was published by Vice Books/MTV Press. MTV currently owns the rights to the book and is working on developing it into a scripted series.
After the book was published, Lesley freaked out and went on a pilgrimage to India, where she continued to write everyday on her blog. Upon her return, Missbehave magazine hired her to work as their Editor-At-Large, and she was soon promoted to Editor-In-Chief. Unfortunately after only two issues, the recession hit and Missbehave closed its doors. Lesley hung on, editing the website for a while, but that too folded. She was really, really sad.
Lesley has freelanced for a number of publications: Jezebel, Jane, Nylon, iD, America, Purple, Paper, Jalouse, and she is currently the New York contributor to Australian fashion magazine, Russh, as well as the US Editor for readplatform.com. She also writes an advice column for streetcarnage.com titled "Ask Barf."
In between her writing gigs, Lesley has worked in the fashion industry, assisting Cindy Greene at Libertine, as well as stylist Heather Mary Jackson.
In her spare time Lesley enjoys DJ'ing, riding her bike, watching TV, and raising hell.
Articles
Book
“Here’s your chance to have all the benefits of a tortured adolescence without the shitty childhood. Congratulations!” — Sarah Silverman on Dear Diary
Largely made up of the diary entries that Lesley Arfin wrote during her teenage and college years, Dear Diary captures everything that makes you cringe about adolescence: The awkward relationships, the social posturing, and the sex and drugs that swirl around both like a flock of diseased pigeons. Arfin injects humor into tales of parental abuse, drug addiction, and a whole pile of insecurity.
Dear Diary began as a wildly popular Vice column, which was made up of one of Arfin’s diary entries and an update written with the perspective ten years gives you.
The book takes this process one step further. Arfin, now 27, tracks down the “frienemies” listed in her diary entries and asks them probing questions like, “Did you French Josh?”
Dear Diary blurs the distinction between past and present, offering a stark, continuous, and cathartic commentary on the author’s life, noting every embarrassing detail and effusively documenting every mistake. This is Lesley’s story, true, but it’s also every girl’s story.
Readers of her generation will be stunned to see their ups and downs mirrored by Lesley’s—things like being into punk music and then switching to rave, or “being obsessed with boys that look like Harry Potter and having [your] heart broken by them,” as Arfin puts it. Much more than mere diary entries, this book is a reflection of life and the mistakes made along the way.
Dear Diary is a truly original work, a Go Ask Alice for the post-Kids generation of New York.
Press
Commercial
Blog
Contact
Feel free to contact me about work inquiries.