Leach receives Excellence in Teaching Award

Dan Leach, assistant professor of English, is the recipient of the 2025 Charleston Southern Excellence in Teaching Award. 

Leach holds a Master of Fine Arts in fiction from Warren Wilson College and a Master of Arts in English from Clemson University. A member of the Charleston Southern faculty since 2020, he specializes in creative writing and teaches workshops in both poetry and fiction. With his trademark blend of Socratic dialogue and humor, he enjoys helping students discover and develop their voices in both academic and creative writing.

Outside the classroom Leach supervises the undergraduate literary magazine, Olive & Ash, and oversees the university’s Writers Guild, a club that meets weekly for the purpose of sharing and critiquing writing across genres.

Leach has two collections of short fiction published and is the 2023 recipient of Texas Review Press’s Southern Poetry Breakthrough Award. Hub City Press awarded him the South Carolina Novel Prize in 2024 and will publish his debut novel.

The annual Excellence in Teaching Award is sponsored by South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities and honors one faculty member from each SCICU institution. Winners are nominated by the individual institutions and receive a $3,000 professional development grant.

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