Fields: Fiction, Creative Writing, Experimental Writing, Hybrid Forms, Graphic Texts, Creative Nonfiction, Essay, Poetry, Film Theory, Trauma & Healing, Interspecies Communication, Spirituality, and Interdisciplinary Studies
Biography:
Janice Lee (she/they) is a Korean American writer, teacher, spiritual scholar, and shamanic healer. She is the author of 8 books of fiction, creative nonfiction, & poetry: KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), Imagine a Death (Texas Review Press, 2021), Separation Anxiety (CLASH Books, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 Oregon Book Award, and A roundtable, unanimous dreamers chime in, a collaborative novel co-authored with Brenda Iijima (Meekling Press, 2023). An essay (co-authored with Jared Woodland) is featured in the recently released 4K restoration of Sátántangó (dir. Béla Tarr) from Arbelos Films. She writes about interspecies communication, plants & personhood, the filmic long take, slowness, the apocalypse, architectural spaces, inherited trauma, and the Korean concept of han, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? Her next book seeks to explore ties between the Korean cultural concept of han, narratives of inherited trauma in the West, the Korean folk traditions and shamanic practices of her ancestors (especially rituals around death), the history and creation of Korean script (Hangul), and revisions of the Korean myth of Princess Bari. In addition to writing seminars and workshops, Lee teaches workshops on inherited trauma, healing and writing, bringing together elements from several different lineages, including the Q’ero tradition of medicine work, Zen Buddhism (in the tradition of Plum Village and Thich Nhat Hanh), Korean shamanic ritual (Muism) and folk tradition, plant medicine & flower essence work, and interspecies communication/collaboration. She currently lives in Portland, OR where she is the Operational Creative Director at Corporeal Writing and an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Portland State University.
On the PSU faculty since 2017.
Books:
- Separation Anxiety (CLASH Books, 2022)
- Imagine a Death (Texas Review Press, 2021)
- The Sky Isn't Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016)
- Reconsolidation: Or, it's the ghosts who will answer you (Penny-Ante, 2015)
- Damnation (Penny-Ante, 2013)
- Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011)
- KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Publishing, 2010)