Leland James is the author of four books of poetry, three children's books in verse, and a book on creative writing and poetry craft. He has published over two hundred poems in poetry venues worldwide including Rattle, The Lyric, The South Carolina Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New Millennium Writings, Vallum, HQ The Haiku Quarterly, and London Magazine. He was the winner of The UK's Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and has won many other competitions, including The Little Red Tree International Poetry Prize, the Writer's Forum short poem contest, and winner of an Atlanta Review International Publication Prize. He was runners-up for the poetry prizes of the Sequestrum Editor's Reprint Awards, the Fish International Prize in Ireland, the Welsh International, The London Magazine, and Writer's Digest. He has received honors in dozens of other competitions, including the Bridport Prize, and Morton Marr, and The Southwest Review. Leland has been featured in Ted Koozer's American Life in Poetry and was nominated for a Push Cart Prize. Leland lives in a cabin in the woods in northern Michigan. He cuts his own firewood and shovels a couple of hundred inches of snow each year. He travels widely to libraries and schools, delivering readings of his own and other's poetry. He is an outspoken proponent of formal verse and accessibility in poetry, as well as endorsing free verse, experiments, and creative combinations. His poetry appears in diverse venues in all of these forms.