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 completed a triple major in poetry, playwriting, and screenwriting and graduated with distinction.

Her MFA thesis was a political play called Enter Vodka, a surreal allegory wrestling with Russian imperialism, PTSD, and the war on Ukraine. Her one-act play The Daughter of Turpentine, an unsettling fairytale for adults about Stockholm Syndrome, haunted audiences at the Victoria Fringe Theatre Festival in 2015, making them laugh and cry.

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 poem Black Lodge Heart can be found in the Twin Peaks anthology These Poems Are Not What They Seem.

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. In her writing, Leah plays with dark comedy, magical realism, and surrealism. She explores the borders between shadow and light.