Joanne Leva, MCPL Executive Director

In 1998, Joanne created the MCPL program, which she has coordinated and produced for the past 13 years. The competition, its related readings, and poetry and awards event (featuring a celebrity poet with a national reputation), comes to it's successful fruition in April, National Poetry Month.

Joanne volunteers her time to coordinate and lead poetry workshops, festivals, and poetry slams within the community. Her poetry series, Poetry Forus, at Barnes and Noble in Jenkintown, North Wales, and Willow Grove, met monthly for 15 years, spotlighting a featured poet from the region and concluding with an open reading for newer poets.

As an active poet herself, Joanne has been writing and performing her original poetry since 1991. She currently works with Percussionist, John Mosemann, to bring the Poetry & Percussion performance series and workshop to creative writing students of Montgomery County and the surrounding Philadelphia area. She has also organized poetry readings at Headhouse Square for Earth Day, the Seven Arts Fest on South Street, the Theater of Living Arts (TLA), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Joanne has performed in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival highlighting cuts from her CD, "A Journal of True Confessions". Her poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, The Schuylkill Valley Journal, The Mad Poet's Review, The Bucks County Writer, among others.

Joanne holds a Bachelor's Degree in Graphic Design from Arcadia University.

Click here to email Joanne Leva