Mary Leauna Christensen, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, received her PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi. Her poetry can be found in the Southern Humanities Review, Denver Quarterly, and the Gettysburg Review, among others. Her nonfiction has appeared in the Common and in Black Warrior Review. She was named a 2022 Indigenous Nations Poets fellow for the inaugural In-Na-Po retreat and was selected as a returning fellow for 2023. Mary Leauna has also been awarded the Fireweed Fellowship for Indigenous women writers under 40 to attend the Storyknife Writers Retreat in Homer, Alaska in 2025. She is a Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.