Leslie Gilbert-Lurie at Chevalier's Books

Leslie Gilbert-Lurie is a writer, lawyer, teacher and child advocate. A graduate of UCLA School of Law, she is a member and past President of the Los Angeles County Board of Education. She is also a founding board member and immediate past President of the Alliance for Children's Rights, a non-profit legal rights organization for indigent children, chair of the education committee for the Los Angeles Music Center, and a board member of several schools.

She spent close to a decade as an executive at NBC, and co-founded a new NBC in-house production company, Lurie-Horwits productions.  Recently, she served as a member of the mayor's task force charged with developing a new cultural plan for the City of Los Angeles.

In Bending Toward the Sun, the author tells the story of her mother Rita who spent years hiding from the Nazis. Rita Lurie was five years old when she was forced to flee her home in Poland. From the summer of 1942 to mid-1944, she and fourteen members of her family hid quietly in a cramped, dark attic, subsisting on scraps of raw food. Young Rita watched as first her younger brother then her mother died before her eyes.  Decades later, Rita's accomplished daughter Leslie realizes how her mother’s pain affected the life and outlook of three generations of women, including that of Leslie’s daughter Mikaela.

Be sure to catch Leslie Gilbert-Lurie at Chevalier's Books on Saturday at 1:00 pm.