Leeya Mehta is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer and essayist. Her novel is Extinction (Simon and Schuster, India, October 6, 2026.) Order here.

Her latest collection of poems A Story of the World Before the Fence “is a lush, lyrical study of memory and history,” says Tim Seibles.

Mehta is widely published in the US, India, UK, and Austria, including in the Times of India, Poetry London, the Beloit Poetry Journal, the Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets and in Red Hen Press’s Future Work.

She is the Director of the Alan Cheuse International Writer’s Center, a non-profit based in America’s capital region. She teaches contemporary world literature in the context of American and world culture, at George Mason University, where the Center is part of a thriving academic community.

The Center’s mission is developing a global community of writers, translators and readers, and curating public programs to deepen global civic engagement. It is a home for international writers and for American writers who face out into the world. By enriching public life through reading, writing, and translation, the Center actively pursues a just society.

In 2024, Leeya was awarded George Mason University’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty Civic Excellence Award and in September 2025 she received Faculty of the Year for the University. George Mason is Virginia’s largest public university and home to over 40,000 students.

This site was created under the stewardship of the brilliant John Johnson. He made the process so easy and fun. It’s so nice for a writer to have a space to reflect their sensibility and aesthetic. You can reach John at JJ@JCJJ.COM