Award Winning Poet Eugenia Leigh to Speak as Part of Major Author Reading Series
Leigh’s work has appeared in many publications including The Atlantic and Ploughshares.
Noted Korean American poet and author Eugenia Leigh will conclude this spring’s Major Author Reading Series (MARS) on Tuesday, May 2. 
Leigh is the author of two poetry collections, Bianca (Four Ways Books, 2023) and Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014). Poems from Bianca received Poetry magazine’s Bess Hokin Prize and have appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic, The Nation, Ploughshares, and the Best of the Net anthology. Other essays have been featured in major publications such as Time and the Rumpus. Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows was the winner of the Late Night Library’s 2015 Debut-litzer Prize in Poetry selected by Arisa White, as well as a finalist for both the National Poetry Series and the Yale Series of Younger Poets.
Leigh received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she was awarded the Thomas Lux Scholarship for her dedication to teaching, demonstrated through her writing workshops with incarcerated youths and with Brooklyn high school students. Since her time at Sarah Lawrence, Leigh has served as a teaching artist with a variety of organizations including Poets House, Brooklyn Poets, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund's group for undocumented youths, RAISE. Leigh served previously as a poetry editor for Kartika Review and for Hyphen, a news/culture outlet that celebrates the Asian American diaspora. She currently serves as a Poetry Editor at The Adroit Journal and as the Valentines Editor at Honey Literary, a BIPOC-focused literary journal and literary arts organization.
"Eugenia Leigh's work is a searing meditation on trauma, personal, familial, inherited," said Dominika Wrozynski, associate professor of English. "But as unflinching as these poems in Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows and Bianca are, they are also hopeful because their speaker has survived. Leigh turns a discerning poet's eye on everything from bi-polar disorder and domestic violence to the wonder of a child discovering language. The Manhattan College community of students, faculty, and staff is grateful that Eugenia Leigh is able to be part of this spring's Major Author Reading Series."
MARS was created in 2010 by David Eye, visiting assistant professor of English, and Adam Koehler, Ph.D., the chairperson of the English department, as a way to offer the entire Manhattan College community the ability to benefit from the expertise of prose writers, playwrights, screenwriters and poets.
The series is celebrating its 13th year and continues to introduce students to the best in contemporary literature. Since its inception in 2010, MARS has welcomed some of the finest contemporary writers including Pulitzer Prize winners Junot Diaz, Jennifer Egan, Claudia Emerson, National Book Awards finalist Joshua Ferris, and New Yorker staff writer, Jia Tolentino.
The event is free and open to the public, and will be held in Miguel 311 (Rodriguez Room) on Tuesday, May 2 from 6:30 p.m to 8:00 p.m. MARS is co-sponsored by the College’s English department and the School of Liberal Arts.
For more information about MARS, please contact Dominika Wrozynski at (718) 862-7921 or dominika.wrozynski@manhattan.edu.
–by Taylor Carroll '17, '23 (M.S.)