About Me

I recently returned to Ann Arbor, MI, where I was raised, after ten years in Seattle and NYC. I love puppies, babies, going on walks, picking berries, scrolling TikTok, and painting my nails. I used to be a gym bro, oboist, and dancer, but those modes aren’t accessible to me now as I experience disability and chronic illness. I’m bummed I can’t dance, work out, or even play oboe anymore, but my physical reality has led me to the most amazing folks in the disability and Disability Justice communities - communities from which I’m so proud to learn and for whose welcoming I’m so grateful. Most days I stay up really late and wake up really late. I think a lot about Whiteness, cultural assimilation, colorism, capitalism, gender, sexuality, imperialism, and the Western lens. I know that sounds really serious, and it is.

I also like to laugh and sometimes do so with such intensity that I cry and can’t catch my breath. I’m a Cancer sun, Leo moon, and Virgo rising, though I don’t really know what that means (please tell me if you do!). Building and being in community is my greatest love and greatest fear. I’ve survived institutionalization and try to nuance everything, which can get annoying, but I can’t help it. I’ve also survived a cult and as a result struggle with roles in which I have authority.

I’m just a person.

Nice to meet you.

I hope you stay a little while and say hi : )

Institutional Bio: Leigh (she/her) is a writer, teacher, and, most importantly, learner. Her debut poetry collection, FREELAND, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2025, and she created and edited That’s a Pretty Thing to Call It: Prose and poetry by artists teaching in carceral settings (New Village Press, 2023). Her work appears in POETRY, jubilat, Split this Rock, and more. She teaches poetry workshops through various organizations including Poetry Foundation, Tupelo Press, Justice Arts Coalition, etc. She co-facilitates (with Nila Narain) Access Oriented Lit, a reading series by and for disabled poets. She also works for Commonplace, Rachel Zucker’s poetry podcast.

She holds a Master of Public Administration degree with specializations in Criminal Justice Policy (particularly quantitative analysis) and Operations & Management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University, where she facilitated free creative writing workshops for war veterans as a 2017/2018 Veteran Writers Fellow.

She completed undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, from which she graduated with high honors and earned a Hopwood Writing Award for a nonfiction manuscript.

She studied classical Ashtanga Yoga at the Mount Madonna Institute and is a certified yoga teacher (RYT 200), with additional certifications in trauma-informed teaching from Street Yoga and Yoga Behind Bars.

Leigh is also a professionally trained dancer, and has performed for choreographers including Alice Gosti, Pat Graney, and Lucia Neare.