Biography

SHORT BIO: Nicole W. Lee is a poet born in Sydney, Australia to Chinese Malaysian parents. Her Pushcart Prize nominated poetry has been published in Agni, Crazyhorse (now swamp pink), Gulf Coast, Meanjin, and wildness, and has received scholarships and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (Rona Jaffe Foundation scholar), Tin House Summer and Winter Workshops, Palm Beach Poetry Festival (Kundiman scholar), Association of Writers and Writing Programs, and Miami Book Fair, as well as grants from Create NSW, Inner West Council, Writers Victoria/Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund, and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust. Her poetry and lyrics have been performed on Channel 7’s ‘Sunrise’ and at concerts by the Inner West Collective, the American Australian Association, and the Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture at Western Sydney University. Nicole is a MFA candidate in poetry at Warren Wilson College and an assistant poetry editor at Four Way Review. In 2021, Nicole was the Writer-in-Residence at Marian St Theatre for Young People, for whom she wrote the interdisciplinary, intercultural, and intergenerational youth show ‘The Red Dust,’ which is slated for performance at Parramatta Riverside Theatres in 2027. Her long poetic sequence “Deluge: A Chinese Almanac” is being optioned for a screenplay by filmmaker Grace Tan. She lives between Sydney and New York.

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LONG BIO: Nicole W. Lee is a poet born in Sydney, Australia to Chinese (Teochew and Hakka) Malaysian parents. Raised on the traditional lands of the Bidjigal people of the Dharug nation (north-western Sydney), she has since lived in Melbourne and New York.

Her Pushcart Prize nominated poetry has been published in Agni, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast (now swamp pink), Meanjin, and wildness, and has received scholarships and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (Rona Jaffe Foundation scholar), Tin House Summer and Winter Workshops, Palm Beach Poetry Festival (Kundiman scholar), Association of Writers and Writing Programs, and Miami Book Fair, as well as grants from Create NSW, Inner West Council, Writers Victoria/Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund, and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust. Her poetry and lyrics have been performed on Channel 7’s ‘Sunrise’ and at concerts by the Inner West Collective, the American Australian Association, and the Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture at Western Sydney University. Her fiction has received a fellowship from VONA/Voices. Nicole is a MFA candidate in poetry at Warren Wilson College and an assistant poetry editor at Four Way Review.

Her writing for performance has been selected for a WestWords/Varuna Emerging Writers Residency, the Contemporary Asian Australian Performance’s (CAAP) Inaugural Artist Lab, Artist Lab 2.0 and Longhouse, and a New Opera Ventures Australia (NOVA) fellowship with Victorian Opera and Chamber Made Opera, as well as being featured on Channel 7’s ‘Sunrise’ and performed at the opening of William Yang’s photography exhibition ‘Claiming Heritage’. In 2020, Nicole was commissioned by Marian St Theatre for Young People to write ‘The Red Dust’ (directed by artistic director Nate Gilkes) in collaboration with the Institute of Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture (IAC) at Western Sydney University, which had its world premiere at Ku-Ring-Gai Town Hall in July 2022. Most recently she presented ‘The Red Dust’ at the NSW state government Department of Communities and Justice Inaugural Community Engagement conference. Nicole was the Marian St Theatre for Young People’s Writer in Residence for 2021. ‘The Red Dust’ is slated for performance at Parramatta Riverside Theatres in 2027. Her long poetic sequence “Deluge: A Chinese Almanac” is being optioned for a screenplay by filmmaker Grace Tan.

As a freelance writer Nicole interviewed chef Eddie Huang on the ABC TV show based on his life, Fresh Off The Boat, and reported from a refugee camp in Tanzania in 2015 during the civil unrest in Burundi. During her time in New York she wrote literary criticism for The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Guardian US, UK and Australia, and published personal essays in The Offing and Brooklyn Quarterly.

Nicole holds a Bachelor of Dramatic Arts (Acting) from the Victorian College of the Arts and a Bachelor of Science (Medicine) from the University of New South Wales. Currently she lives between the traditional lands of the Bidgigal people of the Eora nation (north west Sydney) and the traditional lands of the Lenape people (New York).