The literary evangelist

On April 19, author and Southern Review editor Jeanne Leiby died in a car accident on I-10 outside of Baton Rouge. The news spread quickly through a far-flung writing community that soon expressed its disbelief and grief at her loss. Many used social media and blogs to congregate and communicate.

Her student James Claffey said that Leiby was almost selflessly “committed to the greater community of writers, the world of writing.” This was evident in the overwhelming response to her death. The Southeast Review set up an online tribute asking writers to complete the phrase, “Jeanne Leiby changed my life as a writer by…” Remembrances have appeared in national newspapers and across the Internet, as well as many from the Louisiana State University and Baton Rouge communities.

In addition to being a brave and sensitive editor, a passionate teacher and mentor and a fearless advocate for literature, Leiby was a gifted writer. Well published in reviews and journals, Leiby’s short stories won the Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman and were published in 2007 as the collection Downriver.

In an audio interview with Ruth Eckles of Carolina Wren Press, the publisher of Downriver, Leiby said, “I’ve put many of my characters in these sad places, but I think many of them come to terms with the sadness, or the loneliness or the landscape, and I think that there’s a greatness in that, a joy in it.”

The landscape is that of Leiby’s childhood, downriver Detroit, and will feel at once entirely alien and wholly familiar to Louisiana readers. What resonates locally is the tension between the natural geography of the river and the industry that has developed around it, both enriching and endangering the lives of its citizens. “Our hearts and blood are industrial too, and in the end, we have to believe it’s beautiful here,” Leiby wrote in her short story Vinegar Tasting.

Lee Zacharias wrote on one tribute page, “Her book of stories, Downriver, is excellent, and everyone who misses her as an editor should know her as an author too. Read it.”

Leiby called Allen Wier, a writer with his own relationship to Baton Rouge, her “literary father.” He said of her, “She did not separate the office from the living room, did not really separate the editing, the teaching, or the writing rooms from one another.” Leiby is described consistently in the shared memories of others, from childhood friends to writers who only spoke to her once when she called to accept their work for publication. She encouraged and enlivened everyone she encountered.

Leiby was especially excited about publishing an excerpt of Mark Richard’s memoir House of Prayer No. 2 in The Southern Review. It was announced recently that Richard has won a Pushcart Prize for this publication, and he will speak at the Louisiana Book Festival in October, as Leiby intended.

Leiby’s family is working with The Southern Review to fund a writer’s prize in Jeanne Leiby’s name. Donations can be made to The Jeanne Leiby Memorial Fund at lsufoundation.org.

Leiby’s favorites

An “evangelist for literature,” in Allen Wier’s words, Jeanne Leiby read widely. Here are just a few titles that she loved, was inspired by or was excited about, identified by those close to her.

Elizabeth Bishop, Poems

Ron Hansen, Mariette in Ecstasy

Philip Levine, What Work Is

Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

Marge Piercy, Braided Lives

Annie Proulx, Close Range

Mark Richard, Strays

Richard Russo, Straight Man

Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Wislawa Szymborska, Here