Steven Leyva

Steven Leyva was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and raised in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared in Smartish Pace, Scalawag, Nashville Review, jubilat, The Hopkins Review, Prairie Schooner, and Best American Poetry 2020. He is a Cave Canem fellow and author of the chapbook Low Parish and author of The Understudy’s Handbook which won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from Washington Writers Publishing House. His second book of poems, The Opposite of Cruelty, was published by Blair in Spring 2025. Steven holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore, where he is an associate professor, and codirector of the Klein Family Center of Communications Design.

Ten Things I Can’t Do Without

1. Black humor, meaning playing the dozens, meaning your auntie’s irascible wit at the cookout
2. My son’s eagerness to play volleyball with 43-year-old me, as my knees age more rapidly than milk
3. Roasted brussels sprouts, the diabetic’s truffle
4. Poems that imagine a future
5. An Afro-future, which is to say an undefeated imagination
6. Access to Crunchyroll, my mainline for Anime
7. Dear friends who are courageous in love, quick with grace, and slow to anger
8. Laughter at wild hair left wild
9. Folks resisting every cruelty
10. Eggs, no matter how expensive they become