Leo Cardez (pen name) is an award-winning person in custody writer. Cardez’s various
awards include a Society of Professional Journalist’s Stillwater Award and two PEN America awards for drama and nonfiction respectively. He’s also received Pushcar Press Prize and Best American Essays nominations. His drama has been published by Haymarket Books in the anthology Visiting the Prison Blues and produced in NYC and Chicago. His nonfiction and poetry have been featured, or are scheduled to be published, in The Harbinger, NYU Review Of Law & Social Change, Michigan Quarterly Review, Tadpole Press (published anthology), and Midwest Writer’s Center (published anthology), among others. He holds a BA (Summa Cum Laude) from Augustana College Prison Education Project and is a current MBA student at Adams State College. He can be reached at leo.cardez.writer@gmail.com.