Jacqueline LeKachman

I am a New York-based journalist and editor who writes about family, sex, and other things that keep me up at night. My personal essays and reported pieces have appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, HuffPost, Women’s Health, Business Insider, Newsweek, Salon, Slate, SUCCESS, WIRED, and more. I pursued my MFA in creative nonfiction at The New School and my master’s in journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. 

My memoir-in-progress explores how my mom’s compulsive hoarding, my early introductions to intimacy, and losing my virginity through sexual compliance led me to become celibate for over two years. During that time, I discovered the long-hidden secrets that had shaped my family, and I realized that in giving up sex, I had finally found what I had lacked for most of my life: understanding and agency.

I also plan to write a coming-of-age YA novel, Through the Mess, in which seventeen-year-old Reese struggles to connect with her mother due to her mom’s compulsive hoarding. No one, not even Reese’s older sister, understands the shame Reese feels about her disastrous Cleveland home and tense relationship with her mom. Then a phone call with Reese’s aunt reveals a family secret that makes Reese question everything she thought she knew about her mother. Drawing inspiration from my life, Through the Mess is a story about breaking down the barriers between parents and children and finding a way back to each other despite life’s messes. 

Before becoming a full-time writer, I was a New York City public high school English and creative writing teacher. Now, when I’m not writing, I’m editing for freelance clients and as a freelance copyeditor at Penguin Random House.

You can read all my writing here: https://linktr.ee/jacqueline.lekachman.writing