(left) Nicole W. Lee, (right) Neil Aitken

I’m very excited to have been selected for a Spring (Autumn) 2021 mentorship through the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (USA) with US/Canadian poet Neil Aitken. The mentorship is offered twice a year with participants selected from hundreds of applications in several genres.

Neil is the author of Babbage’s Dream and The Lost Country of Sight (Philip Levine Prize), and holds an MFA from UC Riverside and a PhD from the University of Southern California. Also of Chinese, STEM, and libretti-writing background, Neil and I have had some great talks so far about being part of the BIPOC community, the world of literary journals, and working across multiple genres.