Leah Huete de Maines (better known as Leah Maines)  served as the senior editor for Finishing Line Press 2002-2017. Maines has edited hundreds of poetry collections, including several award-winning titles.

She is  Poet-in-Residence Emerita of Northern Kentucky University (funded in part by the Kentucky Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities). Maines is the author of two poetry books. Her first book Looking to the East with Western Eyes, launched the New Women's Voices Series, No. 1 (Finishing Line Press, 1998), and reached #10 in the "Cincinnati/Tri-State Best Sellers List" (Cincinnati Enquirer), and is now in its fourth printing. Her most recent collection, Beyond the River, (KWC Press, 2002, 1st edition) won the Kentucky Writers' Coalition Poetry Chapbook Competition. Her poems have appeared in numerous national and international publications including Nebo, Owen Wister Review, Licking River Review, Flyway and other literary magazines and anthologies.

Maines lived in Gifu, Japan where she studied and researched classical Japanese poetry at Gifu University. She studied English literature  at Kings College London, England, and The Marino Institute in Dublin, Ireland. She studied publishing at Yale School of Management (SOM). 

Leah Huete de Maines (she/her) is mixed race LatinX / Creole / Sephardic Jewish.