Anna Leahy

Anna Leahy is an American poet and writer. She is the author of Constituents of Matter, a book that won the Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University (KSU) in 2006. Her chapbook, Hagioscope, won the Sow's Ear Press Competition in 2000.

Biography

Leahy grew up in Illinois. She earned a M.A. from Iowa State University, went on to complete a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Maryland and earned her doctorate from Ohio University. She is an English and creative writing professor at Chapman University in Orange, California, where she directs Tabula Poetica: The Center for Poetry.

Leahy has written essays on teaching creative writing which are also collected in Can It Really Be Taught? and The Handbook of Creative Writing, as well as critical work for the Journal of the Midwest MLA, Facts on File Companion to the American Short Story and the Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century. In 2005, she edited Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom which was reviewed by Pedagogy in terms of creating a new paradigm for teaching creative writing at the college and university level. The reviewer found that by examining new ways to teach as presented in Leahy's book, creative writing professors can make better decisions about their own classrooms. In 2010, Leahy contributed to Does the Writing Workshop Still Work?, which was reviewed by Pedagogy and called "an enlightening read for both critics and supporters of the workshop."

In addition to works on teaching methods, Leahy has written poetry which overlaps into science. In 2007, Kent State University Press released Constituents of Matter which was reviewed favorably in Women's Review of Books. The poetry in this book deals with scientific and logical systems such as game theory and the scientific method. The poetry in her collection "reflects science by using metaphors and models to characterize what is unseen," writes Joan Broz from the Chicago Daily Herald. Her poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Image, The Journal and Quarterly West. She is also a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and co-authors a blog with Douglas Dechow about aviation and space. The couple are working on a book concerning the termination of the Space Shuttle program.