Chapter 1: Meet the writer who’s not fond of writing 

Nancy Leson loves books, she loves libraries, she loves to talk and she loves food. 

That makes the Edmonds resident an ideal guest for Sno-Isle Libraries Check It Out! podcast. 

Libraries figured large in Leson’s childhood in Philadelphia. Her family had little disposable income, so off to the library they went to borrow books and glean information from encyclopedias. These days, Leson says, the Friends of the Edmonds Library book sale is her favorite book event every year. 

Books and learning followed Leson into adulthood.  

She’d always wanted to own a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica, so she filled out a postcard to get more information. 

It was a particularly cold winter night in Anchorage, Alaska, when Leson heard a fateful knock on her apartment door.   

She opened the door and exclaimed, “Are you the encyclopedia salesman?” 

The man was flustered. “The guy looks and me and asks, ‘How did you know that?’” 

In his many years of sales calls, no one had ever asked if he was the encyclopedia salesman, he explained. 

“Damned if that night did I not buy, a poor nursing student in my 20s in Anchorage, Alaska, a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica, a gorgeous leather set, that this man came into my house and did nothing more than sell me a set of encyclopedias. I was a very brave young woman.” 

Leson still has those encyclopedias, and she mourned the day when Encyclopedia Brittanica announced it would stop printing them. 

“Now ask me when the last time I opened them was,” she said. 

Funny thing about Leson. Much as she loves words, she hates writing.  

She wanted to be a children’s librarian, then a writer, then tried nursing school, but ended up waiting tables. She finally got into writing courtesy of the University of Washington’s journalism program. But to earn her degree, she had to create “clips” by writing stories for local newspapers, and had to write about state government in Olympia. She resisted. 

“I had no interest in that at all,” she said. “I knew I wanted to be a features writer.” 

Leson finished her journalism degree, but was broke. She went back to waiting tables at an Italian restaurant (now called Nell’s) on Green Lake.  

“I knew every single one of the editors and publishers in town because they all used to eat in there, even Frank Blethen, my eventual boss,” Leson said. “I said, ‘One day, I’m gonna work for you.’ And I wasn’t lying.” 

Leson was still waiting tables a year later when she saw an ad in the back of the Seattle Weekly. They sought an unpaid intern in the food department. She applied. 

“I lied a little,” she said. “I said, ‘My mother always wanted me to be a doctor. Maybe now at least I can tell her I’m an intern. Hire me, I’m your girl!’ And they did. That was the first and last (writing) job I l