Early on in Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Wednesday talk at the Russell House, she alerted audience members that her personal brand of long-term immersion journalism is not for the faint of heart. LeBlanc recalled the warning that a Bronx native who calls himself Boy George gave her during an interview.

“’If you publish any of this before my appeal is denied or if I’m acquitted, I’ll kill you,’” she recalls him saying.

LeBlanc delivered the tale, which elicited chuckles from the audience, with a panache that characterized her comments on everything from her personal evolution as a writer to her thoughts on Britney Spears’ latest head-shaving exploits.

As anyone who has read LeBlanc’s bestselling work “Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx” knows, Boy George was convicted, and the reporter was free to examine the cycle of arrests and draining poverty that plagued the intricate lives of those surrounding him.

What began as a piece for Rolling Stone magazine on a typical drug dealer eventually metamorphosed into a ten-year research stint in which LeBlanc strove to get as close as possible to an extended family facing lives fraught with early pregnancies, drugs, and domestic abuse

“I try to get to the point where there’s a blurring between reporter and subject,” LeBlanc said.

LeBlanc has never shied away from tackling gritty issues. Early on in her career, she authored a piece on teen suicide and then went on to write many well-received stories about troubled youth. Soon after these, she found her skills in demand.

“If you write a good piece that gets published, editors will call,” LeBlanc said. “As a young writer, if you have some talent and a lot of determination, you will always rise to the top. Magazines are always excited to find talented young people who will work long hours for little to no pay.”

Because of her work with teenagers, LeBlanc found a job as a fiction editor at Seventeen Magazine, where one of her activities included leafing through the letters that young girls addressed to the magazine. Working at Seventeen, she said, was a lot of fun, though it had its downside.

“Part of what we were doing was indoctrinating young girls in incredibly problematic ways,” LeBlanc said.

LeBlanc shared a great deal of practical commentary on her career in journalism, mapping out some of the techniques she uses to make full use of her time. She said that her favorite question to ask new interview subjects is what makes them happy.

“It’s a great question, especially for people who are mainly interesting to society because of the problems they cause,” she explained.

Outside of the interview setting, she does not ask a lot of questions, preferring to engross herself in the subjects’ lives as seamlessly as possible.

The author recalled pulling out her notebook at 10 p.m. one night while working on “Random Family” and realizing that she had written nothing during an entire day ostensibly spent in research.

“Oh my God, I haven’t been reporting,” LeBlanc recalled thinking. “Now, if a young writer told me that story, I’d say, ‘You’re doing well.’”

LeBlanc’s total approach to her research did not come without cost.

“I started to sleep a lot, which I think was a result of depression,” she said. “I became very suspicious. Tenderness and kindness became very difficult when you had to be in a fighting pose all the time.”

LeBlanc addressed her holistic approach to reporting and had advice for the aspiring journalist.

“It’s not about strategy and access,” LeBlanc said. “It’s about being prepared to listen. Trying to really listen. That means letting go of your ego, of the idea of ‘trying to get a story.’”

These days, LeBlanc is working on a book about comedians, though she is constantly on the lookout for the raw material of possible future stories. She keeps files of information on any fragment of information that strikes her fancy.

“I am now keeping a Britney Spears file,” she said, greeted with laughter, but her rationale was complex. The author mentioned a friend who had suffered from post-partum depression and stated that she was interested in the pop star for her nascent status as an icon of used-up sexuality.

“I’m fascinated by the idea of her being such a porous entity,” she said. “What does it mean for a young woman to be a brand”

“The thing that struck me was the way she wrote nonfiction like a novelist,” said Deirdre Salsich ’07. “I connected to all the characters [in ”Random Family“], though Coco in particular felt like a younger sibling in a way. The people she wrote about had such a wealth of human qualities.”

This sort of personal attachment to LeBlanc’s work echoed the author’s own intense involvement during the ten years spent researching “Random Family.”

“I was educated as a journalist and as a human being,” LeBlanc said.