Leah Umansky
English Teacher
Biography
Leah Umansky is an educator, curator, collagist and writer in New York City. She is also the author of two other full-length collections of poetry, The Barbarous Century and Domestic Uncertainties, and two chapbooks, Straight Away the Emptied World and the Mad-Men inspired Don Dreams and I Dream. Umansky earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. Her creative work can be found in The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, USA Today, POETRY, and American Poetry Review. She has taught workshops to writers of all ages in such places as The Poetry School (UK), Hudson Valley Writers Center, and Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Visible Ink Program. She can be found at @lady_bronte on twitter or @leah.umansky on Instagram.
What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?
I have a relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and my poetry that has grown over the years. I am not a religious person per se, but I am spiritually and culturally Jewish. It does dapple into my poetry every so often, but it is not the focal point of my work.
Published Works
Of Tyrant (The Word Works, 2024)
The Barbarous Century (2018)
Straight Away the Emptied World (chapbook; Kattywompus Press, 2016)
Don Dreams and I Dream (chapbook; Kattywompus Press, 2014)
Domestic Uncertainties (Blazevox, 2012)
Links to Sample Works
- Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, “Desire [even in the time of the tyrant]”
- Poetry Magazine, “Khaleesi Says”
- Minyan Magazine, “Stun”
