Leslie Bennetts

Leslie Bennetts is the author of The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?, the groundbreaking bestseller that looks at women’s lives and the price they – and their families – pay when they leave the workforce.

A contributing editor at Vanity Fair since 1988, Bennetts has been writing on subjects ranging from movie stars to industrial pollution and US anti-terrorism policy. Her 2005 cover story on Jennifer Aniston was the best-selling issue in the magazine’s history to date, and the People magazine cover story about Bennett’s interview with Aniston was the best-selling issue in the history of People.

Prior to joining Vanity Fair, Bennetts spent fifteen years as a newspaper reporter. She began covering so-called “women’s issues” at The Philadelphia Bulletin in the early 1970s, and has continued to write about women, marriage, families, and parenting ever since. After five years at The Bulletin, she spent ten years as a reporter at The New York Times, where she started as a writer for the Style page and went on to cover national politics, metropolitan news, City Hall, and cultural news. She was the first woman ever to cover a presidential campaign for The Times.

Bennetts has also written for many other magazines, including Town & Country, Columbia Journalism Review, New York Magazine, Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, More, House & Garden, Worth, Family Life, Parents, Child, Parenting, Family PC, Conde Nast Traveler, Lear’s, The Nation, Modern Bride, Glamour, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Self, Women’s Health, Tango, and Woman’s Day.