Dr. Mary Leauna Christensen, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, has strong ties to the eastern TN/western NC area. Her academic interests are: contemporary American poetry, contemporary Indigenous literatures, and the intersections between elegy writing and hybrid texts—specifically the ways both intersect with Indigenous writing.

Her own poetry can be found in Southern Humanities Review, Denver Quarterly, and The Gettysburg Review, among others. While her creative nonfiction appears in The Common and Black Warrior Review. 

Mary Leauna was named a 2022 Indigenous Nations Poets fellow for the inaugural In-Na-Po retreat and was selected as a returning fellow for 2023. She has been awarded the Fireweed Fellowship for Indigenous women writers under 40 to attend the Storyknife Writers Retreat in Homer, Alaska in 2025.