Lesley Téllez is a writer, writing coach, and yoga teacher based in Mexico City, whose creative work intertwines themes of memory, embodiment, agency, and healing.

Lesley has often used food as a medium for storytelling. Her cookbook Eat Mexico: Recipes from Mexico City’s Streets, Markets and Fondas was published by Kyle Books in 2015. For 10 years, Lesley ran the top-rated food tour company Eat Mexico.

Lesley's articles, recipes, and essays have been published in Epicurious, Resy, TASTE, Eater, Bon Appetit, The New York Times, Saveur, and Food & Wine, among other publications. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Barrelhouse and The Acentos Review, and the anthology Not Your Papi’s Utopia: Radical Visions of Latinx Hope.

In 2025, Lesley completed a 300-hour yoga teacher training through the Ignite Institute for Yogic Leadership and Social Change, led by a team comprising Susanna Barkataki, Linda Lopes, and Hien Hong.

Lesley is a proud member of the Macondo Writers Workshop, where she studied with Sharon Bridgforth in 2023 and Cherríe Moraga in 2024. She is a fiction alumna of the Tin House Summer Workshop, Community of Writers, and the Yale Writers’ Workshop. She was awarded a fiction residency from the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts in 2022.

From 2009 to 2015, Lesley authored the award-winning Mexican food and travel blog The Mija Chronicles. Lesley started her career as a newspaper reporter at The Dallas Morning News.

Lesley is a proud Los Angeles native, raised in the Inland Empire. She’s working on a novel about Mexican food, memory, and healing.