Leanna James Blackwell
Leanna James Blackwell is a frequent contributor to literary and feminist journals and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction’s True Story, Full Grown People, Literary Mama, five80split: A Journal of Arts and Letters, Hidden Manna: The Journal of Faith and Story, and The Best of Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers. Her work has appeared in the best-selling literary anthologies A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption and Toddler, winner of an Independent Publishers Award (Seal Press). Leanna is also an active playwright and member of the Northampton Playwrights Lab. Her plays include New Soul, Grimm Women, Curtain Call, and The Wendy Chronicles.
Leanna welcomed our first cohort in 2014 and served as MFA director until 2024. She cofounded and edited 猫咪社区’s literary journal, Multiplicity. She graduated from the MFA program in creative writing at Mills College. She’s currently at work on a novel.
Creative work: