Teresa Leo received her M.A. in poetry in 1990. The title of her thesis was Testing The Waters. Teresa Leo’s poetry and essays have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Women’s Review of Books, New Orleans Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Painted Bride Quarterly, Xconnect, Poetry Daily, La Petite Zine, The Portable Boog Reader Philadelphia, Mooring Against the Tide: Writing Fiction and Poetry (Prentice Hall, 2005), and the anthology Whatever It Takes: Women on Women’s Sport (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999). She has interviewed Rick Moody, Martín Espada, and Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. She also co-wrote and co-directed (with David Deifer) “Virtually, Paris,” a short educational film on literary magazine publishing in the electronic age, which was presented at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs annual conference in 1999, 2001, and 2002.

She is a former columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Commentary Page, past Editor-in-Chief of Painted Bride Quarterly, and has served as Acting Director of the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania. She also worked with the Philadelphia Writing Partnerships Program, where she edited and designed anthologies of poetry written by students participating in the program from nine Philadelphia public middle schools in North Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, and Kensington. Currently she serves as a contributing editor for The American Poetry Review as well as Xconnect Magazine, the literary journal at the University of Pennsylvania. Her awards include a 2006 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Literature Fellowship in poetry), a 2005 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Special Opportunity Stipend Award in Literature, a 2003 Leeway Foundation Emerging Artist Award for creative nonfiction), a 2002 Pew Fellowship in the Arts in poetry), and a 2001 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Literature Fellowship in creative nonfiction. She has done artist residencies at the Virginia Center for the Arts, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Vermont Studio Center. She works at the University of Pennsylvania. More about Teresa Leo and her work can be found here.