Leanne Averbach is a Canadian text and performance poet.

As a former trade union organizer and left-wing activist, her experiences include some indelible moments spent in factories or incarcerated in jail cells. Family and love encounters often incite her work, as do visual art and the “mad poetry” of harsh international realities. 

Her first volume of poetry, fever, was released in Spring 2005 (Mansfield Press), and she has since released a companion CD, also entitled fever. Averbach has performed her poems with jazz musicians in Canada, the US, Italy and the UK.

Leanne's work has been published in several literary magazines including: The Fiddlehead, Descant, Antigonish Review, Washington Square, Dalhousie Review, Sub-Terrain, Poetry New Zealand, The New Quarterly, Canadian Women's Studies, Grain, and Big City Lit.

Leanne formerly taught at the University of British Columbia. She also has an MFA from The New School in New York City.