1. About Leslie (home)
2. About Wynton Marsalis: Skain's Domain
3. Chapter One: "Yes, Yes"
4. Chapter One: "Yes, Yes" (cont.)
5. Why I Became a Writer About Jazz

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Her long list of book titles include the most recently published biography, "Wynton Marsalis: Skain's Domain" (Schirmer Books), as well as "Straight, No Chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonious Monk", "The Billie Holiday Companion", The Ella Fitzgerald Companion, "Madame Jazz", "Sassy, The Life of Sarah Vaughan", "Unforgettable: The Life and Mystique of Nat King Cole", "Dizzy Gillespie and the Birth of Bebop", "Everyday: the Story of Joe Williams".

In 1991, Ms. Gourse was given an ASCAP award for a series of seven articles about women jazz musicians in Jazz Times magazine, Silver Spring, Maryland.

She has written for newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Women's Review of Books at Wellesley, Mass.; Newsday, Daily News, New York Post, the Christian Science Monitor and World Monitor, both in Boston; Village Voice in N.Y.C., the Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, the Amsterdam News in N.Y.C., and many, many others.

Among the magazines are Success, the Sunday Times magazine, Sunday News Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, New York, McCall's, Cosmopolitan, Diversion owned by Hearst, the brief-lived Hers, Emmy, Ford Times, Essence, Gentlemen's Quarterly, Ebony Man, Woman, Amtrak Express, TWA Ambassador, House and Garden, American Visions, American Way, Sky, Japan Airlines's Winds, New York, Travel & Leisure, Essence, Emerge, Players, and many, many others, and music magazines including Keyboard, Downbeat, JazzIz, Jazz Times, Bass Player, Modern Drummer, Request, Replay, Guitar Player, CD Review, Pulse, Bird, and others, including Jazz Hot in Paris for which she was the New York correspondent, writing the monthly News Notes and feature articles in 1995, and feature articles in 1996, and will begin writing again in 1999.

She writes liner notes for albums for record companies such as Fantasy, Columbia, Capitol, RCA Novus, Concord, Roulette, Arabesque, Muse, Music & Art, and several European labels, e.g. Criss Cross, Soul Note and Enja.

Ms. Gourse worked as a writer for the "Morning Report" for CBS Network Radio News. N.Y.C., from 1966 to 1968 and as a stringer on regular general assignment in social trends for the national desk of the New York Times, N.Y.C., from 1970 to 1974, first for Gene Roberts, then for Dave Jones. She also wrote news shows on a freelance basis for WINS in the 1970s, wrote reports on the environment for Cooper Union in the early 1980s, at which time she also did freelance research for Consumer News Correspondent Betty Furness, NBC-TV.

She lives in New York City and is currently writing a biography of Carmen McRae.