Leslie Sainz became managing editor of New England Review in late 2021 and edits the Staging Style craft series. A first generation Cuban-American, she was born and raised in Miami, Florida. Her debut poetry collection, Have You Been Long Enough at Table (Tin House, 2023), won the 2024 Audre Lorde Award and was named a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, the New England Book Award, and the Vermont Book Award. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her BA in Professional & Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon University. Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Yale Review, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Leslie has received scholarships, fellowships, and honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, CantoMundo, and The Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts at Bucknell University.

She was the editor-in-chief of Devil’s Lake, the graduate-run literary journal at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has worked as an editor for Carnegie Mellon University Press, Bull City Press, and West Branch.