Rate My Professor Anna Leahy

Anna Leahy is a Professor of English in the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University. She directs the MFA in Creative Writing program, edits the international Tab Journal, and founded and co-directs the Health Humanities Interdisciplinary Minor. Previously, she directed the Center for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (OURCA) and served on the Senate Committee for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Leahy earned her Bachelor of Arts from Knox College, Master of Arts from Iowa State University, Master of Fine Arts from the University of Maryland College Park, and Ph.D. from Ohio University. She teaches in the MFA and BFA creative writing programs and has facilitated Literature & Medicine conversations among healthcare providers through California Humanities.

Leahy's creative and scholarly work focuses on poetry, creative nonfiction, health humanities, disability studies, science writing, and creative writing pedagogy. Her poetry collections include If in Some Cataclysm (Glass Lyre Press, 2024), Gloss (The Laurel Review and GreenTower Press, 2023, Midwest Chapbook Prize winner), What Happened Was: (Small Harbor Publishing, 2021), Aperture (Shearsman Press, 2017), Constituents of Matter (Kent State University Press, Wick Poetry Prize winner), Sharp Miracles (Blue Lyra Press, 2016), and earlier chapbooks Turns about a Point and Hagioscope. Nonfiction books are Tumor (Bloomsbury, Object Lessons series, 2017), co-authored Generation Space with Douglas R. Dechow (Stillhouse Press, 2017), and Conversing with Cancer. She edited Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom (Multilingual Matters). Essays have won top prizes from Mississippi Review, Los Angeles Review, Ninth Letter, and Dogwood, including the Award in Creative Nonfiction for “A Brief Encyclopedia of My Mother’s Cancer” (Los Angeles Review, Spring 2020), Grand Prize in Literature for “Sweet Dreams Are Made of These” (Dogwood, Spring 2016), and Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction for “Marrying Absurd” (Ninth Letter, Fall/Winter 2016-2017). Her work appears in venues such as Poetry, Scientific American, Prairie Schooner, Bennington Review, The Washington Post, Aeon, BuzzFeed, and Literary Hub. Leahy has received fellowships from MacDowell, the American Library in Paris, Sewanee Writers' Conference, Joshua Tree National Park, and Ragdale. She directs Tabula Poetica, curates a poetry reading series, and serves on the board of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.