Biography

Lang Leav (born September 8, 1980) is an Australian novelist and poet.^[1][2][3]

Early life

Leav was born at a refugee camp in Thailand where her parents were seeking refuge from the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.^[4]

She is the youngest of three siblings. In 1981, her family migrated to Australia.^[1] Leav was raised in the suburb of Cabramatta, Sydney.^[5][6][7]

Leav's interest in literature started at a young age. She would transcribe her poetry into books she made by hand, which she then passed around to her peers at school.^[8]

Education

Leav attended the College of Fine Arts in Sydney. The refugee community she belonged to was critical of her decision as the field was perceived as financially unstable and therefore impractical. Nevertheless, Leav persisted.^[9] Her undergraduate thesis in college, titled "Cosplaying Lolita" granted her a Churchill Fellowship Award.^[7]

Career

While Leav is known for being a writer, she initially established a cult fashion label Akina which earned her a Qantas Spirit of Youth Award.^[5][7][9] In 2012 Leav began posting her poetry on Tumblr and her work amassed a large following. In 2013 she self-published her first collection of poetry and prose titled Love and Misadventure.^[10] The book was a surprise hit and caught the attention of literary agents in New York. Leav signed with New York Agency, Writers House before she was offered a publishing deal with Andrews McMeel.^[11][10][5] The bestselling book ranked top on Amazon.^[3] Leav released Lullabies the following year which won the Goodreads Choice Award for Poetry.^[12]  Newsweek credits Leav for popularizing poetry.^[13]

Leav subsequently published another five poetry titles: Memories (2015) The Universe of Us, (2017) Sea of Strangers (2018) and Love Looks Pretty on You (2018), all of which were nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award for Poetry have been international bestsellers. Her debut YA novel Sad Girls reached #1 on the Straits Times Bestseller chart for fiction and drew mixed reviews. Bustle wrote, “Sad Girls will have you reaching for the tissues; this YA debut is incredibly powerful.” ^[14] The New Straits Times and The Star (Malaysia) criticized the novel for its lack of depth and character development.^[15][16]

Leav’s second YA novel, Poemsia, was also a Straits Times Bestseller^[17] and drew mainly positive reviews, with Marie Claire stating: ‘Leav writes masterfully from the perspective of her protagonist, an aspiring poet, and gives readers a backstage glimpse into the new-wave poetry movement.'^[18]

Readings stated, “The writing is not as lyrical as one would have hoped from a poet, but the characters are well defined.”^[19]

Leav's college degree equipped her with the technical skills to illustrate several of her books, including Love & Misadventure, Lullabies, Memories and The Universe of Us.^[6]

Leav has been a guest speaker at a number of international writers festival, including The Sydney Writers Festival, The Sharjah Book Fair,^[20] Auckland Writers Festival^[21] and was a headliner at the Mass Poetry Festival in Boston, Massachusetts.^[22]

In 2019, Penguin Random House secured the audio rights to Leav’s novel Poemsia in addition to her poetry titles, including The Universe of Us, Sea of Strangers and Love Looks Pretty on You.^[23]

The foreword for Leav’s poetry book September Love is written by Lili Reinhart.

Leav’s debut in literary fiction, Others Were Emeralds, was sold to Harper Perennial in a pre-empt, and international rights were secured at auction by Penguin Random House, Australia. Others Were Emeralds, based on Leav’s immigrant roots, has been praised by critics, with Publisher’s Weekly^[24] describing it as “A heartrending novel.” Booklist wrote, “Leav’s coming-of-age debut is poetic and lyrical, her prose rich in beautiful imagery.”^[25]

Literary critic Sonia Nair from Books & Publishing^[26] wrote: “Others Were Emeralds is rich with lush descriptions and an unmistakable sense of place...there’s a beautiful specificity in Leav’s evocation of life as a second-generation Cambodian-Australian.”

Style and inspiration

Leav's poetry work is described by the New York Times as frank poems about love, sex, heartache and betrayal. ^[27]

She writes mainly in rhyme, verse and prose poetry. The tone of her work is confessional.

Leav considers Emily Dickinson as an inspiration. She admires Dickinson's ability to convey intense emotion in short and compact poems. She also cites Robert Frost as an influence,^[28] for his use of colloquial language. The re-occurring themes of nature, love, death and time in Frost’s poems often appear in Leav’s own work.

Maryanne Moll, an award-winning Filipino fictionist and a literary criticism student, said Lang’s poems are her way of exercising the trauma she inherited from her mother.^[1] In an interview with Marc Fennel from SBS, Leav explains how her style of writing stems from being a natural translator for her immigrant parents. “Language had to be distilled as things can get lost in translation.” ^[29]

Criticism

Leav is occasionally attributed to the Instapoetry^[30] movement^[31] which has been panned by the literary establishment as being derivative.^[32]

Whether Leav’s work falls into this genre has been a subject of contention. Journalist Laura Grainger from Hotpress writes, “But if you compare Lang’s work to many of her contemporaries, you’ll notice she writes somewhat less like them and more in line with the work of classical poets.”^[33]

Bibliography

Poetry and prose collection

• Love and Misadventure (2013)
• Lullabies (2014)
• Memories (2015)
• The Universe of Us (2016)
• Sea of Strangers (2018)
• Love Looks Pretty on You (2019)
• September Love (2020)
• The Gift of Everything (2021)
• Self-Love for Small-Town Girls (2023)

Poetry

• Anthology of Love (2017)

Novels

• Sad Girls (2017)
• Poemsia (2019)
• Others Were Emeralds (2023)

See also

• Instapoetry

References