Leigha Chhay (she/her) is an American author, and photographer. She invites her readers to join her on a healing journey of self acceptance and reflection, by exploring the delicate range of human emotion through striking vulnerability.
Her debut, Broken By Laughs Like Flying Fish, lays bare the pain of limerence and longing. In it, Chhay commiserates with her readers in short, passionate verses that are all at once deeply intimate and specific, yet universally relatable.
With her sophomore collection, Bare Legs, Bottom Step, Chhay delves deeper into the themes of love, heartbreak, shame, boundaries (broken and built), femininity, sexuality, memory, manipulation, and hope.
Her photography has been featured on MSN Lifestyle, Mob Journal, Hartford Magazine, The Middletown Press, Zola, Boston Voyager, The Hartford Courant, and Surreal Mag. She is currently accepting inquiries for portrait commissions.
“…Chhay commiserates with the reader in short, passionate verses that are all at once deeply intimate and specific, yet universally relatable… a beautiful window into the soul…”
inventing the midnight sun
Proof from Bare Legs, Bottom Step
she presents handsomely, a haphazard tho sturdy idea,
fastened together with mismatched nails
from a decades old coffee tin
still-good ends
bits of leftover veneer
salvaged boards from walls torn down
during the archeological dig of her story
steel teeth plucking away
at the raised pins of a tarnished brass cylinder
which plays a song back into space
and time
to the girl who was
too free with her thoughts and body
proof that beauty can emerge
from the discarded
even so late as this
in the night
Connecticut Poet and Portrait Photographer
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Leigha Chhay 