Lang Leav is among a new rising of Instagram poets – dubbed Instapoets – whose work speaks to the social media generation. Like her fans throughout the world, many Malaysian teenagers discovered the 35-year-old Australian through Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr, social media sites where Leav posts most of her poetry and writing. She has close to 50,000 followers on Twitter and over 130,000 on Instagram. By all accounts, she’s a best-selling celebrity poet, but being labelled an Instapoet is something Leav has mixed feelings over.
“I have no idea how that came about,” she says. “I only started using Instagram a year ago. I haven’t thought much about the term, but anything to get people reading is a good thing. I feel like I’m a writer, and I don’t think writers should be pigeonholed. Writers are writers.”
Leav has had three books published already, Her first collection, Love And Misadventure, was out in 2013 and shifted over 10,000 copies, enough to land her with US publisher Andrew M
