This event is virtual-only (via Zoom) and is open to Helen Zell Writers' Program MFA students and Zell Fellows, as well as U-M graduate and undergraduate students. It is not open to the general public. Please email Julie Cadman-Kim (kimjulie@umich.edu) for login instructions.

Leslie's talk, "Big Fish, Little Mag: The Significant & Ongoing Returns of Publishing in Literary Magazines," will highlight some of the possible long-term benefits of publishing individual works in literary magazines, including securing agented representation, full-length manuscript solicitations, inclusion in anthologies of literary merit such as the Pushcart Prize and Best American series, employment opportunities, and more.

Leslie Sainz is the author of Have You Been Long Enough at Table (Tin House, 2023). The daughter of Cuban exiles, she is the recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. Her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, the Yale Review, Kenyon Review, Narrative, AGNI, and elsewhere. A three-time National Poetry Series finalist, she’s received scholarships, fellowships, and honors from CantoMundo, the Miami Writers Institute, the Adroit Journal, and the Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts at Bucknell University.

Leslie received her MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her BA in Professional & Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon University. She became managing editor of the New England Review in late 2021. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of Devil’s Lake, the graduate-run literary journal at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has held editorial positions at Carnegie Mellon University Press, Hub City Press, Bull City Press, and West Branch. She has edited poetry collections by Tiana Nobile, Lindsey Alexander, and Leah Silvieus, and individual pieces by NER contributors in all genres.