Ava Leavell Haymon

Ava Leavell Haymon is a poet, playwright, and teacher. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, The Sun, and many others; in five chapbooks; and in two collections, The Strict Economy of Fire and Kitchen Heat, from Louisiana State University Press. A third collection from LSU Press, Why the House Is Made of Gingerbread, is forthcoming. She holds the Louisiana Literature prize for poetry in 2003. She teaches poetry writing in Baton Rouge during the academic year and in New Mexico in the summer, where she directs a retreat center for writers and artists. She has directed workshops and read her poems widely, in the United States and in Canada. Her plays are written for adults to perform for children, seven of them produced by Playmakers of Baton Rouge, in children’s theaters and schools throughout south Louisiana, and one by a children’s theater workshop in Houston, Texas. She and her husband Cordell Haymon live in Baton Rouge with two cats and without their two grown children.