Hillary Leftwich

Hillary Leftwich is a neurodivergent writer and author of two books, Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (CCM Press, 2019 and Agape Editions, 2023 new edition), and Aura (Future Tense Books and Blackstone Audio Publishing, 2022). She has published or has work forthcoming in The Sun, Santa Fe Writers Project, The Rumpus, Denver Quarterly, and other publications and has written reviews for High Country News, Heavy Feather Review, and others. She teaches creative writing at The University of Denver, Colorado College, Unity Environmental University, The University of Maryland, and Lighthouse Writers, and teaches youth for Lighthouse Youth. She is an active judge for the Colorado Book Awards and has served as a judge for the James Yaffe Prize in fiction and The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in poetry. She has been awarded scholarships for her writing from The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, the Margaret Randall scholarship from Naropa University, and Voices for the West Writing Workshop from Torrey House Press (2024). Buzzfeed News chose Aura (Future Tense Books, 2022) as one of “17 Recent and Upcoming Books from Indie Publishers You Need to Read.” The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes requested Aura for consideration in the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose category and was also a winner of the Reader’s Choice Award for the 2022 Big Other Book Awards and a finalist for the Big Other Book Awards 2022 in the Nonfiction category. Her first book, Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (CCM Press, 2019), won Entropy’s Best Fiction Book (2019) and was a finalist for the Reader’s Choice Award for the 2020 Big Other Book Awards and a finalist for the 2020 Big Other Book Awards in the Fiction category. She owns Alchemy Author Services and Writing Workshop and also moonlights as a professional Tarot and Bones reader.