Kendra Preston Leonard

words for and about music

I'm a scholar focusing on music and screen history and women and music; and a poet, playwright, lyricist, and librettist.

You can now rent or purchase Opera Elect’s video production of SENSE OF SELF, a micro-opera about athleticism, breast cancer, and identity by Lisa Neher and me!

“Cassandra at the Bonfire,” a companion piece to Girls Love Horses, is now online at Harpy Hybrid.

Read “Concrete,” published in Scapegoat Review.

My poem “Birthday” appears in Green Ink’s new anthology Roots.

“Lammas,” in easing the edges: a collection of everyday miracles. This collection benefits the Patrick Heath Public Library in Boerne, TX. Buy this book and let me know, and I’ll send you a link to my reading of the poem AND another, unpublished piece.

“Macondo Prospect” will be published by Wingless Dreamer this winter.

My triptych about lupus, “Because of the wolf,” is forthcoming from Please See Me.

You can still watch all 5 new micro-operas from the One Voice Project Micro-Opera Festival from March here. These feature 5 terrific singers in great performances.

Zoom talk on “The Life and Music of Julia Perry,” sponsored by the Lexington Philharmonic, 5 November 2021.

“Recognizing the Truth of ‘Craft’,” The Journal for Research and Practice in College Teaching, Summer 2021.

Hidden Narratives: Women and Music in Popular Entertainment, co-edited with Paula Bishop, forthcoming from the University Press of Mississippi, 2022.

“Women and Technology in Music for the Silent Cinema,” in Player Pianos in Early 20th-Century Life, ed. Catherine Hennessy Wolter, 2022.