Leia Penina Wilson recently graduated with her MFA from the University of Alabama. She's since then moved to the desert, and will be pursuing her PhD in poetry at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada. She's proudly Samoan, and is thrilled to find taro in the grocery stores. When she's not writing she likes to play Magic the Gathering, watch movies, make cocktails, and bake.

Books by Leia Penina Wilson:

Other poems on the web by Leia Penina Wilson:
"himself he dreamed that too"
"She Escaped"

Leia Penina Wilson on Twitter.

About i built a boat with all the towels in your closet (and will let you drown):

"I was mesmerized by the wild lyricism, quiet wit, and fearless curiosity of these poems. I feel lucky to have encountered them and am delighted to recognize them with the To the Lighthouse Prize."
—Evie Shockley

"Leia Wilson thoughtfully assembles a world, then dissembles it, so that we might see its brilliant underside. She illuminates the hidden spaces of memory and the body, uncovers fossils in time and language, looks to the faraway for answers. Stars, seasons, cities, birds, the spoken and unspoken are all stitched and unstitched, hinged and then unhinged. Wilson beautifully takes everything apart and gives us the burning, shimmering cores of things."
—Jenny Boully