LSU Mourns the Loss of The Southern Review Editor Jeanne Leiby

BATON ROUGE – The LSU community is mourning the loss of Jeanne Leiby, editor of The Southern Review and associate professor of English, who was killed April 19 in an automobile accident.

“We are deeply saddened to learn of Jeanne Leiby’s tragic death,” LSU Chancellor Michael Martin said. “This is a great loss to the LSU community, both personally and professionally. The students, faculty and staff with whom she worked will miss her greatly.”

Leiby became editor and director of The Southern Review a little more than three years ago, and her first issue was released in the summer 2008. The first female editor of the prestigious journal, Leiby had been looking for ways to meet the needs of new and changing readership. Some of the avenues that The Southern Review is actively involved in now include blogging on The Southern Review’s website and utilizing social media outlets, including Facebook and Twitter. She has been instrumental in sustaining the journal through the university’s recent budget cuts and was looking forward to working more closely with LSU Press as the two historic, literary units are merging. Leiby was also a dedicated, talented teacher and mentor to her students.

Leiby grew up in downriver Detroit. She graduated from the University of Michigan, earned her master’s degree from the Bread Loaf School of English/Middlebury College and her MFA degree from the University of Alabama. Her stories have appeared in Fiction, New Orleans Review, Greensboro Review and Indiana Review, among other magazines. Her collection of short stories “Downriver,” winner of the Doris Bakwin Prize from Carolina Wren Press, was published in fall 2007.

For nearly a decade, she lived in Orlando and taught creative writing at the University of Central Florida, where she also edited The Florida Review. She also held positions in her career at the University of Tennessee; University of Alabama, where she was fiction editor of Black Warrior Review; and Rutgers University.