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Leah Maines American Poet, Nonfiction Writer, and Editor

Leah Maines

Biography

Leah Maines has served as the senior editor for Finishing Line Press since she took over the press in 2002. She has edited over 550 poetry collections, including several award-winning titles. She is former Poet-in-Residence of Northern Kentucky University (funded in part by the Kentucky Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities). Maines is the author of two poetry books. Her first book was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Williams Carlos Williams Book Award (Poetry Society of America). Looking to the East with Western Eyes, New Women's Voices Series, No. 1 (Finishing Line Press, 1998) reached #10 in the "Cincinnati/Tri-State Best Sellers List" (Cincinnati Enquirer), and is now in its fourth printing. Her most recent collection, Beyond the River, (KWC Press, 2002, 1st edition) won the Kentucky Writers' Coalition Poetry Chapbook Competition in 2002. Her poems have appeared in numerous national and international publications including Nebo, Owen Wister Review, Licking River Review, Flyway and other literary magazines and anthologies. Maines lived in Gifu, Japan where she studied and researched classical Japanese poetry at Gifu University. She also studied at Kings College London, England and The Marino Institute in Dublin, Ireland. Leah lives with her husband and children in Central Kentucky. She is an avid golfer, and collects golf balls (and poetry chapbooks) from around the globe.

Here are some of the award-winning titles I have edited:

  • Anna Ross's Hawk Weather was the winner of 2009 New England Poetry Club's Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award (for the best chapbook published in the preceding year). Judged by Helen Marie Casey .
  • Cheryl Loetscher's Unclaimed Baggage was the winner of 2008 New England Poetry Club's Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award (for the best chapbook published in the preceding year). Judged by Harris and Svetlana Sussman.
  • Marianne Worthington’s Larger Bodies Than Mine was the WINNER OF THE 2007 Appalachian Book of the Year Award for Poetry awarded by the Appalachian Writers Association.  Past winners include James Still, George Ella Lyon, Charles Frazier, Robert Morgan and Lee Smith.  
  • Tania Runyan's poetry collection Delicious Air was the WINNER OF THE 2007 Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature Belles Lettres . Previous winners include: Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being ( Farrar, Straus), Arthur Kirsch, Auden and Christianity (Yale University Press); Michael Joseph Colacurcio, The Province of Piety: Moral History in Hawthorne's Early Tales ( Harvard University Press); Susannah Brietz Monta, Martyrdom and Literature in Early Modern England, (Cambridge University Press); Harriet Guest,  A Form of Sound Words: The Religious Poetry of Christopher Smart, ( Oxford University Press), among others.  This nomination can only come from the publisher, and is awarded for a book that has "contributed most to the dialogue between literature and the Christian faith. " (Please note that Finishing Line Press is open to submissions from peoples of all faiths, and has published poets from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds.)
  • Anne Wilson's poetry collection SOLEA! was theWINNER of the San Diego Book Award for "a book of poetry."
  • Brenda Kay Ledford's poetry collection Shew Bird Mountain was the WINNER OF THE 2007 PAUL GREEN MULTIMEDIA AWARD. The Paul Green Multimedia Award is given by the North Carolina Society of Historians.
  • Kaye Bache-Snyder's poetry collection PINNACLES AND PLAINS was the WINNER of first place in the National Federation of Press Women’s annual competition, in category 75, creative verse.

  • Carol Hamilton's Shots On was selected as a finalist in the 20th Annual Oklahoma Book Award Competition.
  • Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s chapbook Tracings was the WINNER of the Silver Award for Excellence by the Military Writers Society of America.

  • Gary Metras 's Francis d'Assisi 2008 made the “Highly Recommended” list of the 9th Annual Massachusetts Book Awards (2009).
  • BG THURSTON's Saving the Lamb made the “Highly Recommended” list of the 8th Annual Massachusetts Book Awards (2008).
  • Frederick Smock's poetry collection Sonnets, was a finalist in poetry in the Kentucky Literary Awards for excellence in poetry. The award for poetry was given to Jeff Worley for Happy Hour at the Two Keys Tavern (Mid-List Press).  Jeff is also the author of the chapbook Leave Time (Finishing Line Press).   (Portions of Leave Time are included in the above  full- length collection.) Jeff received a cash prize of $1,000.
  • Linda Annas Ferguson’s chapbook Stepping on Cracks in the Sidewalk won an honorable mention in the 2007 Oscar Arnold Young Book Award of the Poetry Council of NC. 

Publishers

  • Finishing Line Press.

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