Raised and educated in Australia, David Leser began his journalistic career as a cadet at the Daily Telegraph in Sydney. From 1982 to 1987, he worked as a foreign correspondent based first in Washington and then in the Middle East. He has also worked as features writer for The Australian Magazine and HQ magazine, and has been with Good Weekend since 1994.
In 2018, he published an article in Good Weekend, called 'Women, Men and the Whole Damn Thing': the response to the article was such that he expanded it into a book by the same title, published by Allen and Unwin in 2019. The book was longlisted for the 'Nib'.