Leslie Epstein, whose illustrious writing career includes a dozen novels, led BU’s Creative Writing Program for more than 30 years. Photo courtesy of the Epstein family

Obituaries

Remembering Leslie Epstein, Pillar of BU’s Creative Writing Program

Friends, colleagues, and former students of the author, who died May 18, recall his steadfast dedication to—and passion for—literary fiction

Leslie Epstein was a pillar of the Boston University Creative Writing Program, serving as its director for more than 30 years. This week, he is being remembered by colleagues and former students as a writer and teacher who cared deeply about literature, following his death May 18 from a stroke after heart surgery. He was 87 years old. 

As a writer, Epstein’s illustrious career included a dozen works of fiction, along with reviews and essays in the Boston Globe, the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and many other publications. His best known novel, King of the Jews, has become a classic of Holocaust fiction and has been published in 11 foreign languages, as well as adapted for the stage both in Boston and New York.

“Something I always admired about Leslie is—and I think I have this right—Leslie was always reading Marcel Proust. Every evening, he read a page or two of the C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation, I believe, of À la recherche du temps perdu, and he studied it. He took pleasure in it and it was part of his daily life. Every evening he would reconfirm his faith in a certain kind of introspective, realistic writing. And that’s something I always admired about my colleague and friend,” says Robert Pinsky, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of English, a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, and a former United States poet laureate. 

Like Pinsky, those who worked with Epstein, a CAS professor of English, recall his dedication to the art of writing and to taking seriously the sort of literary fiction for which Proust, and the great Russian and American writers—such as Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov, and John Steinbeck—are known. 

But Epstein was never just a writer who taught, his colleagues and former students say. He was, for many, a teacher of writing. 

“He loved his students and was very dedicated to teaching,” says Ha Jin (GRS’93), an award-winning fiction writer and poet who studied at BU with Epstein and now directs the University’s Creative Writing Program. “He often said that once he closed the classroom door, he forgot about everything else. He just enjoyed the time spent with his students. I think he was, to some of them, kind of a formidable presence in the program and in their lives. And he could be very serious, but at the core, I think he was very sweet and very considerate; a very kind man. He’s irreplaceable, really. It’s a huge loss for the [Creative Writing] Program.”

As a teacher, Epstein knew his own mind, his former students say. He understood what worked, and what didn’t, in his students’ work, and was not shy about praising the former and pushing for better when he encountered the latter. 

“Leslie called me when I got into the Creative Writing Program at BU, and the way that he talked to me about my writing made me feel like a real writer—and, importantly for me at that time, a real fiction writer,” says Lisa Taddeo (GRS’17). At the time, she had just finished writing her nonfiction book, Three Women, and was interested in MFA programs where she could expand her writing into fiction, as well. Three Women would go on to win the Narrative Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2020 and was adapted as a TV series in 2024.

“As a teacher, Leslie had a writerly warmth about him in the way that he understood how hard this could be and still encouraged us to do better,” Taddeo says. She recalls that he had rigorous opinions about writing, and could sometimes clash with students or colleagues over those opinions, but his intentions “were always to make other people’s writing better, and to try to help. 

“I never felt like anything was more important to him than his students getting better—and, not only that, but that they have an understanding” of the writing, she says. “For me, the only thing that matters is that someone cares, and Leslie was someone who genuinely cared.” 

Lili Anolik (GRS’03), also a former student of Epstein’s, describes him as “tough but un-mean, a tricky combination to pull off.” She recalls Epstein telling her once that if she put a section of writing in italics, “you were all but telling the reader that what you were saying was unimportant, and to skip ahead.

“I laughed at the time, thinking he was either kidding or being ridiculous. But now, I come to an italics section in a book, and I skip ahead. I can’t help it. He cursed me or blessed me—I don’t know which. I do know, though, that I am incapable of taking italics seriously,” says Anolik, who is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a writer at large for Air Mail.

“Leslie radiated decency, sympathy, unselfishness, fineness. Plus, he was funny. Really, the man was heaven. I’m so sorry he’s gone,” she says.

Epstein’s life and upbringing also gave him an expansive view of culture and politics; a view Taddeo and others say helped them contextualize the sometimes tumultuous nature of both. 

“Leslie had a deep knowledge of art—literary art, but also film, music, painting—and he had a vision of all of those sharing a certain spirit that he communicated as a person and as a teacher,” Pinsky says.

Epstein’s father and uncle, the twins Philip and Julius Epstein, were the Academy Award–winning cowriters of the classic 1942 film Casablanca.

In an interview with the Boston Globe following his death, Epstein’s daughter, Anya, said: “There was a creative streak that ran through the family.” She is a TV producer and writer whose series credits include Homicide: Life on the Street and In Treatment.

Epstein was also the father of Theo Epstein, a part owner and senior advisor of the Fenway Sports Group, who more than 20 years ago became the youngest general manager in Major League Baseball history and the youngest to win a World Series when Boston snapped its 86-year championship drought in 2004. Theo’s twin brother, Paul, is well-known in Brookline as a longtime social worker at the high school.

In addition to his children, Epstein is survived by his wife, Ilene, and his brother Ricky, of Carpinteria, Calif., as well as six grandchildren.