Leah Rachel von Essen is an editor, writer, and book reviewer who lives on the South Side of Chicago with cat Ms Nellie Bly. Her debut, Moon Literary Travel: A Bookworm’s Guide to the United States, will be published Fall 2027 by Avalon Travel. It is an illustrated travel guide to the top 50 literary sites in the U.S.
By day, Leah is a copyeditor and factchecker at Encyclopedia Britannica. By night, she runs While Reading and Walking, a blog with more than 30,000 dedicated followers across several social media outlets. She is a contributing editor, Adult Books, for American Library Association’s magazine Booklist, and is a regular contributor to Book Riot and the Chicago Review of Books. Leah is also a volunteer and former board member of Chicago Books to Women in Prison, an all-volunteer-run organization that delivers books to women and trans people incarcerated across the United States.
Leah is represented by agent Amelia Appel at TriadaUS Literary Agency.
Get to Know Me Better
I grew up in a small, forested town in New Jersey before coming to Chicago for college. I received a degree in Comparative Literature with a minor in Religious Studies, and graduated with honors in 2016. In college, I rowed and coxswained for the varsity crew team; worked on literary magazine Sliced Bread; and fell in love with the city of Chicago.
I’m a passionate women’s sports fan, supporting the Chicago Stars and the Chicago Sky, and like to advocate for Chicago’s independent bookstores whenever I can. I’m also a dedicated traveler, reading and walking as far as Argentina, Mexico, India, and Japan. If you can’t tell, I don’t know how to relax, so I usually come back from vacation more tired than when I left.
My happy places are in the middle of a forest (any forest, but redwoods especially) and beside the lake or sea. I can talk your ear off about cool insects, Virginia Woolf, travel itineraries, and ancient mythology. And while I have dozens of favorite books, some favorite authors include Woolf, Toni Morrison, NK Jemisin, Amal El-Mohtar, Mariana Enríquez, Seanan McGuire, Hanif Abdurraqib, Carmen Maria Machado, Elena Ferrante, and Rebecca Solnit.
