Merrill Leffler

Merrill Leffler is a poet, an editor, a science writer, and a former physicist and engineer. Raised in Brooklyn, New York, and High Point, North Carolina, he earned a BS at North Carolina State University and worked at NASA. He did graduate work in literature at University College Maryland and Oxford University.

He is the author of three books of poetry: Mark the Music (2012), Take Hold (1997), and Partly Pandemonium, Partly Love (1984). He cofounded and edited the literary magazine Dryad, which evolved into an independent press of the same name. He is also a cofounder of the DC-area literary nonprofit The Writer’s Center.

Since 2011, Leffler has been poet laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland, where he lives with his wife, the poet Ann Slayton.