Leslie McGrath

Who is Leslie McGrath?

Leslie McGrath is an American poet and former managing editor of Drunken Boat, an online journal of the arts. She is the author of the collection Opulent Hunger, Opulent Rage, a finalist for the 2010 Connecticut Book Award in poetry, and the chapbook Toward Anguish, which won the 2007 Philbrick Poetry Award.

McGrath received her MFA in literature and poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars after receiving an MA in psychology from Wesleyan University. Her poems have appeared frequently online and in print, and have been anthologized both in the US and India. McGrath was awarded the 2004 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, a 2007 Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism and has served on the judges’ panels for the Connecticut Book Award in Poetry, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the Maine Arts Commission. Her literary interviews have been published in The Writer's Chronicle and have also been aired on public radio. McGrath serves on the advisory board for The Word Works, a literary press in Washington, D.C., which sponsors The Washington Prize, as well as the board of The James Merrill House in Stonington, CT.