about

Leah Callen is a CBC longlisted poet and playwright with a BFA and MFA in Writing from the University of Victoria, British Columbia. She was a triple major in poetry, playwriting, and screenwriting who graduated with distinction. Her MFA thesis was an anti-Putin play called Enter Vodka, a theatrical dialogue between a Romanov and a Stalin as an allegory for Russia’s war with Ukraine. Her one-act play The Daughter of Turpentine, a dramatic tale of Stockholm Syndrome weaving fairytale and reality, came to the Victoria Fringe Theatre Festival in 2015.

Leah’s verse has appeared in print and digital literary journals including The Malahat Review, Vallum, EVENT, Contrary, Contemporary Verse 2, Sequestrum, The BeZine, and Barren where she was a poetry contributing editor. Her words can be found in a Twin Peaks anthology These Poems Are Not What They Seem. She also studied poetry with George Elliott Clarke during a Sage Hill Writing retreat at St. Peter’s Abbey in Saskatchewan. Leah was longlisted for the 2018 Vallum Award for Poetry and the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize. Her poem Hypnosis was nominated for Best of the Net.