Leslie Sainz became managing editor of New England Review in late 2021. A first generation Cuban-American, she was born and raised in Miami, Florida. The recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, 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 Yale Review, New England Review, Kenyon Review Online, AGNI, jubilat, Narrative, and elsewhere. Leslie has received scholarships, fellowships, and honors from CantoMundo, The Miami Writers Institute, The Adroit Journal, and The Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts at Bucknell University. Her manuscript in progress has been a finalist for the National Poetry Series twice (2021, 2019) and a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize, and the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry.

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.