Born in Toledo, Ohio, Leonard Kress grew up in and around Philadelphia. He has a B.A. in Religious Studies from Temple University and an M.A. from the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He has also studied Slavics at Indiana University and Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Kress has received grants from the Pennsylvannia Council on the Arts Literature Fellowship and from the Polish Ministry of Higher Education and Kosciuszko Foundation — to Krakow, Poland. He is currently a Masters of Fine Arts Candidate at Columbia University and teaches writing at Temple.