Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Leslie Johansen Nack. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Leslie Johansen, appreciate you joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

They made me feel loved. My mother was an alcoholic, mentally ill nurse who worked in a hospital her entire life. My father was an abusive, overpowering, and belittling adventurer. They got divorced when I was seven, but somehow I survived my crazy family feeling loved. I was grounded in it. I felt special, like the moon was following me, because my last name was Johansen. It happened like this: My father used every opportunity to teach me everything he knew. He took me on sailing adventures halfway around the world, taught me to navigate and captain a ship, and how to recover a stolen boat while working undercover, all the while believing in me and my abilities, yet degrading and belittling me. There was no more valuable prize than the smile and acknowledgement of a job well done. Compliments were not part of my upbringing, so it was like Christmas morning when they appeared. My mother loved me because I took care of her and helped her even though she manipulated and undermined me at every chance. Both of my sisters had given up on her. She was too much work. And yet I knew she loved me. Having that foundation has helped me believe in myself as an adult.

Leslie Johansen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have always wanted to write books. I knew I would do it one day, even as a child. But too much trauma prevented me from starting until I was in my fifties. Once the universe gave me the green light I had been waiting for, there was no doubt that I would write a memoir about my crazy childhood. I published that first book, Fourteen: A Daughter’s Memoir of Adventure, Sailing and Survival, in 2015, after years of therapy, trauma counseling, sobriety, marriage, and children. But Fourteen wasn’t the whole story. I knew I needed to finish the story since many people who read Fourteen wanted to know what happened next. I have written the end of my angsty and dysfunctional abusive teenage years, and it’s called Nineteen: A Daughter’s Memoir of Reckoning and Recovery, due out October 2025.

In the middle years between Fourteen and Nineteen, I wrote historical fiction about the life of Marion Davies, a silent film star and paramour of William Randolph Hearst. I became inspired by her and could not stop myself from writing her story. The Blue Butterfly, A Novel of Marion Davies, came out in 2022.

These are my passions and my life’s work now. I don’t know what I will write next, but I hope inspiration revisits me.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Of course, the obvious goal would be to be wildly successful and not wonder what I’ll write next, or if it’ll be successful, but that would mean I could see the future. Right now, as I sit here, at sixty-four years old, staring down the fact that I’m going to be an old woman soon, the goal of my writing is to enlighten and to educate. I’d like to write a book with my daughter. She’s interested in that, and I am always interested in spending more time with my children and teaching them anything I can.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

My lesson is ongoing. It’s the lesson taught to me by my misogynistic father that women are not as good as men. My father always wanted sons. Instead, he had three daughters. Our challenge as his daughters was to unlearn the lessons that women are weak and stupid compared to men. I’d be a millionaire if I had a dollar for every time my father called me stupid. And yet I tried very hard as a young girl to learn everything he taught me so I could make him proud. And there were times when I succeeded. Those days were glorious. I thought if I could be good enough, smart enough, fast enough, he would have to admit that girls were capable and indeed smart. My dream to have him publicly call me First Mate aboard the various boats we sailed on, delivered, and recovered was never realized. I almost had enough sea time to get my Captain’s license at seventeen, but he would still not call me Official First Mate. Crew members he brought aboard the boat who had never sailed outranked me on deck and in public. It tore me up. He died a few years later, and I never got the opportunity to be “official.” I have spent the rest of my life learning that I am valuable, smart, and capable of anything men are capable of. It’s been a lifelong lesson of unlearning.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lesliejohansennack.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Leslie.johansen.nack/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lesliejohansennack/#
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqImTCBk_TIKCpA7NSWHbbQ