about

Leah Callen is a CBC longlisted poet and playwright with her BFA and MFA in Writing from the University of Victoria, British Columbia. There she completed a triple major in poetry, playwriting, and screenwriting. 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 respected 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 also be found in a 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.

After falling for the prairies during a Sage Hill Writing retreat at St. Peter’s Abbey in Saskatchewan, Leah relocated to Regina. She belonged to the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild. Two years of prairie sun and snow later, she returned to Vancouver, BC and her beloved sea.

Leah studied ballet and classical voice for years in Ottawa and Vancouver. She forever finds joy in the performing arts, but she is most devoted to her writing. Her passion for democracy recently inspired a new chapter: working for the Canadian civil service.