She is an author of two award-winning novels, The Hunter (1999) and Disquiet (2008), for which she has been described as a "sorceress who casts a spell of serene control while the earth quakes underfoot".
[3] Leigh majored in philosophy and law at the University of Sydney and was admitted to the NSW Supreme Court as a Legal Practitioner.
Leigh also wrote and made her directorial debut with Sleeping Beauty, a 2011 film starring Emily Browning about a university student drawn into a mysterious world of desire.
In a review in the Sydney Morning Herald, Gretchen Shirm concluded that "at the heart of this book lies an overwhelming generosity, a willingness to impart personal experience for the insight it offers others".
[13] Leigh has spent extensive periods in Paris and New York (where she was Adjunct Associate Professor of English at Barnard College).