Leigh Nash

Prince Edward County-based writer, educator and publisher Leigh Nash tells us: “I half-jokingly refer to myself as a lapsed poet, and the truth is that I’m enjoying the lapse!” This “lapse” is understandable, given all that Leigh has been up to since graduating from the University of Guelph with an MFA in Creative Writing.

Leigh’s full-length poetry collection, Goodbye, Ukulele, was published in 2010. As an educator, she has taught writing, editing and publishing at York University and Humber College, as well as in a volunteer capacity. She has previously worked as the publisher at House of Anansi Press and Invisible Publishing, and she co-runs the PEP Rally Reading Series out of Books & Company in Picton. An author of several chapbooks, she also co-founded The Emergency Response Unit, a chapbook press.

“I’ve published little of my own work in the last decade, but I’ve published plenty of work by other people,” she says, “and my main artistic practice these days is in service of others’ writing, as a book editor and publisher with Assembly Press.”

Helmed by a small but mighty team, Assembly Press has four titles being published in the first half of 2026. Established in 2023, the publishing house is a fiercely independent publisher of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry written by international and Canadian authors. Having published over a dozen titles and counting, the publishing house is notable for engaging with contemporary issues with thoughtfulness, incisiveness, and passion in equal measure.

On Friday, February 13th, 2026, Leigh will be leading a 3-hour afternoon workshop, Finding and Nurturing Your Poetic Voice, at the County Arts Lab. No prior experience with reading or writing poetry is required, and participants will leave the workshop having learned how to use elements such as language, sentence structure, perspective, and rhythm to give life to their words.

Visit our Community Art Classes page to learn more and sign up (few spots remain!), and find more resources and offerings for writers on our Writers’ Corner page.

Read on to learn about Leigh’s exciting upcoming projects, music recs and more!

Tell us about your upcoming projects:

Assembly Press is putting together a word search book, a collection of puzzles featuring words provided by local residents, businesses, and and organizations. The book features cover art designed especially for us by Lucy Sterezylo, and royalties from sales will go to theROC Youth Centre. County Word Search will be in stores in June 2026, so keep an eye out for it!

Tell us about another artist’s work you’ve experienced recently that made an impact on you:

There’s a novel coming out in March—Nightshade, by Lynn Hutchinson Lee—that I acquired and edited for Assembly. It’s my dream book in that the writing is gorgeous and peppered with magical realism, and there’s a good plot with great pacing and scenes and characters, it’s set in Southern Ontario’s tobacco belt in the 1980s, and it’s inspired by Lynn’s Romany family emigrating to Canada from the UK. I can’t wait for other people to get to read it.

Name a piece of media (music, movie, podcast, book, etc.) you’ve been loving lately:

I bought a Jens Lekman record—The Cherry Trees Are Still in Blossom—a couple years ago from Deserters’ Records, and it’s been playing on repeat lately in our living room.

What is your favourite comfort food?

Beer, and lots of it, especially from 555 or Slake!