David K. Leff Papers

Background on David K. Leff

A poet, essayist, and environmental advocate, David K. Leff was born on April 9, 1955, in Albany, N.Y. Following Leff's birth, his family moved to Connecticut due to his father's job transfer. In his youth, Leff was perceived as a relatively average student, until a sophomore year high school teacher's introduction to the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson captured his interests and motivated him to become a writer. After graduating from high school, Leff elected to attend the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he received his bachelor's degree in English in 1975. In order to pay for school, Leff worked odd jobs throughout his college career, including as a tool factory porter, house painter, dishwasher, salad chef, and bankruptcy paralegal. Following his graduation from college, Leff decided to pursue his interest in law, and return to his home state, by enrolling in the University of Connecticut School of Law. He graduated from law school in 1978, and passed his bar exam to become a licensed lawyer that same year. After receiving his education, Leff began his extensive career as both an environmental activist and a writer.

Leff's life and work highlight his immense dedication to both the natural world and public service. He had a 28-year career with the State of Connecticut as a policy advisor to the state legislature regarding agriculture and the environment. As deputy commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, he was in charge of parks, forests, fisheries, and wildlife. For seventeen years Leff served as a senior attorney for the Office of Legislative Research, Connecticut General Assembly. Also active in his community, Leff volunteered as a firefighter for 26 years; acted as the Canton, Conn., town historian and the town meeting manager; and worked with youth as a Boy Scout merit badge counselor and a tutor. Leff was a board chair or member for several organizations, including the Collinsville Historic District Commission, the board of trustees of the Great Mountain Forest in Norfolk, Conn., and the Connecticut Forest and Park Association. He was also the former director of Audubon Connecticut.

Leff's love for the environment translates beautifully into his writing. His poetry, articles, and books center on the relationship between people and place: their communities as well as the historical and natural environment. Leff was the author of many essays, columns, and stories for esteemed publications such as The Hartford Courant and Appalachia. In addition, he published his nonfiction in book form: The Last Undiscovered Place (2004), Deep Travel: In Thoreau's Wake on the Concord and Merrimack (2009), Hidden in Plain Sight (2012), Maple Sugaring: Keeping it Real in New England (2015), Canoeing Maine's Legendary Allagash (2016), and Doppelganger: A Memoir of Mirrored Selves (2020). Leff also published several poetry collections, allowing his artistic impulse a new medium with which to explore the world and life. These collections include The Price of Water (2008), Depth of Field (2010), Tinker's Damn (2013), The Breach: Voices Haunting a New England Mill Town (2019), and The Blue Marble Gazetteer (2022), and the verse novel Finding the Last Hungry Heart (2014). With Eric D. Lehman, he coedited New England Nature: Centuries of Writing on the Wonder and Beauty of the Land (2020). Leff was busy as a lecturer, speaker, and poetry reader at events, and was involved with several writing and literary organizations. Leff served on the board of the Riverwood Poetry Series, an organization with a regular monthly reading series that sponsors the biennial Connecticut Poetry Festival, and occasionally served as a judge to poetry contests.

Leff garnered many awards for his civic involvement and his writing, among them honors from the United Bow Hunters of Connecticut and the Connecticut chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Leff was given the Special Recognition Award by the Connecticut Association of Conservation and Inland Wetland Commissions in appreciation of his writing about landscapes and habitats. His first book, The Last Undiscovered Place, published in 2004, was a Connecticut Book Award finalist. Leff's book Canoeing Maine's Legendary Allagash: Thoreau, Romance and Survival of the Wild, which details his 2016 travel adventures, won a silver medal in the Nautilus Book Awards for memoir and a silver medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards for regional nonfiction. In 2018, Leff received the lifetime honor of appointment as the New England Beat Poet Laureate by the National Beat Poetry Foundation. The following year Leff was appointed poet laureate of Canton, Conn. Leff presented poetry at various writing seminars such as the acclaimed Sunken Garden Poetry Festival in Farmington, Conn., the Mark Twain House in Hartford, and numerous other venues.

In his later years, working from his home office located in the middle of the old mill village of Collinsville, Conn., Leff spent his free time enjoying outdoor activities such as working in his flower garden, tending to his chickens, and fishing, hiking, and canoeing. For about fifteen years Leff made maple syrup and was a member of the Connecticut Maple Syrup Producers Association. Leff was married to Mary C. Fletcher, a fine art painter and library creativity specialist, with whom he had three children. David Leff passed away on May 29, 2022, at the age of 67.