Mary Leader is the author of five collections of poems. The first two won major awards in the United States, the National Poetry Series and the Iowa Poetry Prize. In the United Kingdom, her publisher is Shearsman Books. The Distaff Side is her third book at Shearsman.

For many years, Leader practiced law in her native state of Oklahoma, first as an Assistant Attorney General and later as a Referee for the Oklahoma Supreme Court. She then parlayed herself into a career in academics, earning a PhD in English and American Literature from Brandeis University and going on to teach, at Emory University, University of Memphis, then Purdue University, where she is now Professor Emerita. Subject to home-sickness all along the way, Mary Leader retired from active teaching and returned to Oklahoma. Having survived oral cancer, she now reads and writes poetry full-time.