A Bit About Me

Originally from Northeast Pennsylvania, Lena holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Western Kentucky University and a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing Studies from Bowling Green State University where she researched gender, sexuality, and the rhetorics of sexual violence and consent. From 2021-2025 she served as an Assistant Professor of English at Albright College in Pennsylvania where she taught composition and creative writing. She was the editor/co-founder of the literary and arts journal The Hunger, which ran from 2017-2023. She is the author of the short fiction chapbook MASH (The A3 Press) and her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has been published in Indiana Review, Split Lip Magazine, Duende, Dream Pop Press, Miracle Monocle, Literary Orphans, and others. Lena's first book, A Revisionist History of Loving Men, is published with Autofocus Books and available for purchase now.

As an alumnae of AmeriCorps Vista, Lena is deeply committed to community engagement, service, and social justice. She has spearheaded community writing initiatives throughout Northwest Ohio including the first BGSU Community Writing Project. She remains committed to taking action, locally, to ensure a more equitable world, with a special focus on literacy.

Lena lives in Pennsylvania with her husband. In her free time she enjoys being in nature, visual art, listening to audio books, traveling, cooking delicious vegetarian food, and getting the most excited about everything. She is the creator and host of the podcast Reading Michael Jackson - a project aimed at exploring the King of Pop through a deep analysis of his written work. She loves music, being cozy, and is an avid fan of all things dark and humorously angsty. Her favorite authors include bell hooks, Brené Brown, Lidia Yuknavitch, Celeste Ng, Cheryl Strayed, Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehesi Coates, and Octavia Butler.

She believes in forgiveness, magic, the transformative power of language, and resilience of the human heart.