Poet, Cave Canem Fellow, Associate Prof. @ubaltmain, Author of The Understudy’s Handbook (@WWPHPress 2020), and The Opposite of Cruelty (@Blairpublisher 2025)

Joined September 2011
5,153 Photos and videos
Steven Leyva retweeted
how your email finds me
Cover art for “SHADOWRUN: Corporate Security” (1995), illustrated by Doug Andersen.
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Poet @sdleyva reading for us at AWP. Steven Leyva is the author of The Understudy’s Handbook (Writers' Pub. House) & The Opposite of Cruelty (@BlairPublisher). His poems appear in @SmartishPace. #poetry #poet #smartishpace #AWP #bmoreart youtu.be/1MdNZAzt6Sk?si=Djcx… via @YouTube
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Poems are therefore we are. Let the church say amen. Let a man church the white space until it blackens. And since it was our sisters who first said, “i have seen the lord,” poems are.
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Steven Leyva retweeted
This argument always gets hung up on prestige programs and flattens the broader MFA experience. I went to a state school for free, my classmates were working adults, several alumni run notable presses. A fancy degree might open some doors but it won't make you a better artist.
People seemed interested in my thoughts on this, so I wrote about the MFA-ification of American letters and what MFAs select for: estragon.news/the-oracular-o…
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Steven Leyva retweeted
my MFA didn't get me into the New Yorker but it made me write, design and publish my first book. it honed so many of the skills I needed to make BRUISER. that's real shit.
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Steven Leyva retweeted
if you're mad about "MFA writers" it's because you keep reading legacy publications that mostly publish "MFA writing" and expecting a new experience. you are bored because you are boring.
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Steven Leyva retweeted
fwiw my program isn't even funded. I took advantage of a tuition remission opportunity while working full time; many classmates found similar ways in. huge props to the UBMFA for opening their arms to an incredibly diverse range of mostly working and lower-middle class writers
Replying to @markplasma
I also went to a funded program at a state school! But I definitely agree with your conclusion.
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IYKYK
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Let’s go!
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The Smashing Pumpkins still hit. That’s it. #uncrecs
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17 Nov 2025
Poem and the Poem that inspired it
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Steven Leyva retweeted
Last chance to submit for the Wren Poetry Prize, which recognizes a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd poetry collection. Winner receives $1K advance against royalties and gets to work with Blair. No reading fee. Send by Sat, Nov 15—but the portal closes early if we reach 300 submissions first!
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Steven Leyva retweeted
Pssst. Got a 1st/2nd/3rd book of poems that needs a good home? Send it my way! I'm the final judge of this year's Wren Poetry Prize for @BlairPublisher. NO reading fee. Get your entry in soon—when we reach 300 submissions, we close the Submittable portal. blair.submittable.com/submit

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Steven Leyva retweeted
24 Sep 2025
Come to @prattlibrary this SAT 9/27 @ 3 pm to celebrate the launch of AMERICA'S FUTURE with @WWPHPress! Readers include @sdleyva, @snarkysyntax, @ZorinaExie, Matt Hohner, Annie Marhefka, Adam Schwartz, & Cherrie Woods! Also streamed here: youtube.com/watch?v=gkeXe4SU…
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24 Sep 2025
Reading 📖, literacy, & critical thinking are probably the most valuable job skills in this moment of techno-fatalism and fascist hysteria. Poems, Novels, & Memoirs are the strength training for the muscle of your imagination. Journalism is the cardio. Conversation the cooldown

ALT Anime Frieren GIF

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Steven Leyva retweeted
Flum manages to make the reader an intimate outsider, rather than simply a voyeur. Steven Leyva washingtonindependentreviewo… press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books…
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Steven Leyva retweeted
Day 20 ( 28 . 08 . 2025 ) Poem by Steven Leyva, published in “Poetry Magazine” (December 2024)
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