LESLIE HEYWOOD is Professor of English and Creative Writing. She is the author of two books of poetry, Natural Selection (Louisiana Literature Press, 2008) and The Proving Grounds (Red Hen Press, 2005), as well as the memoir Pretty Good for a Girl (The Free Press), which was named a Breakthrough Book by Lingua Franca.

Heywood's poetry has been published in Prairie Schooner, The Connecticut Review, Paterson Literary Review, Louisiana Literature, Lips, Women¹s Studies Quarterly, and Caduceus. Her academic work includes Built to Win: The Female Athlete as Cultural Icon, Dedication to Hunger: The Anorexic Aesthetic in Modern Culture, and Bodymakers: A Cultural Anatomy of Women¹s Bodybuilding.

A sample of her work:

From the Bench-Press Meet

Lying on my back on the cracked vinyl bench
Shutting my eyes vice-tight before my training
Partner shouts, me, the men, the studs, the boys
Playing Oscar de Leon under a cloud of puros,
Cigars we'll smoke together right after this meet,
The Annual Central New York Bench War,
All of our hips of sky rolling, rolling
Billy's alcoholic father in the space behind his breath,
His own tendency to go through
Several cases of Keystone Light each week,
Terence with his parole officer
Over his shoulder and that upstate prison
Still in his eyes, and me, their tough buddy girl friend
Wearing old scars the way I've built my shoulders tight,
Our fathers behind us rolling and rolling
As each of us strains to press
Something inside us much thicker than our heads,
Our hearts, our chests, our breaths.