Leigh Sugar
Publishing Name
Current City, State, Country
Biography
Leigh Sugar (she/her) is an artist currently based in Michigan. Her debut poetry collection, FREELAND (Alice James Books, 2025), was a finalist for the Alice James Award and the Jake Adam York Prize, and she created and edited That’s a Pretty Thing to Call It: Poetry and Prose by Artists Teaching in Carceral Settings (New Village Press, 2023). A disabled and chronically ill poet, Leigh has an MFA from NYU and an MPA in criminal justice policy from John Jay College. She’s taught at Poetry Foundation, The Institute for Justice and Humanity, various prisons, and more.
What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?
Drawing from Zora Neale Hurston’s line “There are years that ask questions and years that answer” is the literary idea that there are poems that ask questions and poems that answer. I think all my poems ask questions, and I feel a strong connection between my obsession with interrogating text and my Jewish identity, for what is a Jew if not a person enchanted, challenged, drawn in by “the book”? I grew up in a secular humanistic home, and while religiosity was not strongly emphasized, Jewish values such as tikkun olam, tzedakkah, and constant reading and questioning were palpable. I bring these values to my poetry, both overtly and indirectly. Some of my poems very pointedly engage with questions around justice, in/equality, and humane action; others are more generally concerned with these ideas. My debut collection, FREELAND, includes autobiographical poems about my family history, drawing connections between the diaspora, the history of Jewish expulsion from land and the relatively recent Nakba and occupation of Palestine, present day mass incarceration and widespread US military involvement overseas, abolition, and more.
Published Works
FREELAND (Alice James Books, 2023)
Edited Collections
That’s a Pretty Thing to Call It: Prose and Poetry by Artists Teaching in Carceral Settings (New Village Press, 2023)
Author Site
Links to Sample Works
Honey Literary, “Inheritance” and “CORRECTIONS”
POETRY, “FREELAND: An Erasure”
Philly Poetry Chapbook Review, “Ars Poetica”
Current Title
Education
2023 – John Jay College of Criminal Justice – Master’s in Public Administration with a double focus on Criminal Justice Policy and Organizational Management
2018 – New York University – Master’s in Fine Arts (Poetry)
2013 – University of Michigan – Bachelor of General Studies with a focus on carceral studies, the built environment, and the arts