Leigh Curran is the Founder of The Virginia Avenue Project  and from 1991 to 2013 was its Artistic Director.  The Virginia Avenue Project is a non-profit using long term, one-on-one arts mentoring to give children growing up under difficult circumstances the skills to thing creatively, critically and courageously about life goals and choices.  Inspired by the work she had done with the 52nd Street Project in New York City, Leigh gave up the Big Apple in 1991 to found the Virginia Avenue Project in Los Angeles.  The Project’s longtime community partner is the Santa Monica Police Activities League in Santa Monica, California.

Leigh is also the author of three full length plays: The Lunch Girls (finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award; world premiere at the Long Wharf Theatre, Arvin Brown, dir.; Off Broadway at the Grove Street Theatre , Stuart Ross, dir.); Alterations (Off Broadway at the WPA Theatre, Austin Pendleton, dir.; world premiere at the Whole Theatre Company, Olympia Dukakis, dir.) and Walking the Blonde (world premiere Off Broadway at Circle Rep, Paul Benedict, dir; and Off Broadway at La Mama, Leonard Foglia, dir.)  The Lunch Girls and Alterations are published by Samuel French.

Leigh’s first novel, Going Nowhere Sideways, was published in 1999 by Fithian Press and was highly praised by Publishers Weekly, Spillway, and Inscriptions Magazines and is available on Amazon.com.  Her poetry has appeared in Slant: A Journal for Poetry, Onthebus, The Bark, Spillway, and Rattle Magazines as well as in the on-line e-zine, The Junkyard.

As an actress, Leigh has performed on, off and way off Broadway working with the likes of Kathy Bates, Arthur Penn, Paul Benedict and George Abbott.  In Los Angeles she has appeared in the LA Women’s Shakespeare Company’s acclaimed productions of Romeo and Juliet, Othello and Measure for Measure.  TV/Film credits include: West Wing, Judging Amy, Once and Again, and Reds.