Leigh Sugar

Leigh Sugar (she/her) is a writer, an educator, and a movement artist based in Michigan. She edited That’s a Pretty Thing to Call It: Prose and Poetry by Artists Teaching in Carceral Settings (New Village Press, 2023). Sugar earned an MFA from New York University and an MPA in criminal justice policy from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She has taught academic and creative writing in various settings, including New York University, the Institute for Justice and Opportunity, the Justice Arts Coalition, the Poetry Foundation, and several prisons in Michigan. 

Sugar is a winner of the University of Michigan Hopwood Award and has published work in Poetry magazine, jubilat, the Split This Rock Poetry Festival, and other outlets. She assists the poet Rachel Zucker on Commonplace Podcast: Conversations with Poets (and other people), and is the creator and a co-facilitator of Access Oriented Lit (AOL), an online literary series for disabled and chronically ill writers. She is a former professional dancer and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.