Karen An-hwei Lee



Karen An-hwei Lee (born 1973) is an American poet.

Life
Born in 1973 and raised in Massachusetts, Lee is a Chinese American poet, translator, and critic. She earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from Brown University and a Ph.D. in literature from the University of California, Berkeley. A former resident writing fellow at the MacDowell Colony for the Arts in Peterborough, New Hampshire and the Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, New York, Lee currently resides in Santa Ana, California.

Her first poetry book, In Medias Res: a primer of experience in approximate alphabetical order, was selected by poet Heather McHugh and published to critical acclaim by Sarabande Books in 2004. Lee received national accolades including six Pushcart Prize nominations, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award, the Kathryn A. Morton Prize for Poetry from Sarabande Books, and the July Open sponsored by Tupelo Press.

Her poetry and fiction has appeared in Greensboro Review, Prairie Schooner, Columbia Poetry Review, and a number of other publications. She is the author of a chapbook, God's One Hundred Promises (Swan Scythe Press, 2002), and a second full-length collection, Ardor (Tupelo Press, 2008).

Awards

 * 2005 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Grant
 * 2004 Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award.
 * 2004 Kathryn A. Morton Prize for Poetry, Sarabande Books
 * 2002 Swan Scythe Press Prize
 * Eisner Prize, University of California, Berkeley
 * Yoshiko Uchida Foundation Fellowship
 * Beinecke Foundation Fellowship
 * John Hawkes Prize, Brown University