Biography
Lance Lee’s poems, stories and articles have appeared widely in both American and English journals. Books of poetry include Wrestling With The Angel (1990), Becoming Human (2001), Human/Nature (2006), Seasons of Defiance (2010), which placed as a finalist in the 8th. National USA Book Awards, Transformations combining art and poetry (2013), and Homecomings (2015). Elemental Natures, selected lyrics, sequences, and prose, appeared in 2020. He is a recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and various other scholarships.
Essays appear variously, including the “The American Voice” online for the US Poets Issue for Agenda, and “Script Analysis Conventional and Unconventional” in On The Waterfront from Cambridge University Press...
A number of his plays have been produced and published. Rasputin and Gambits were produced at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. Time’s Up and Fox, Hound, & Huntress were premiered in Los Angeles, the latter with help from the Rockefeller Foundation via the Office for Advanced Drama Research. Publications include Time’s Up; Fox, Hound, & Huntress; and Time’s Up and Other Plays.
He founded an MFA program in playwriting at the University of Southern California, and helped found the graduate screenwriting program at California State University, Northridge. He has published several works on screenwriting and drama: The Understructure of Writing for Film & Television, A Poetics for Screenwriters, and The Death and Life of Drama: reflections on writing and human nature (2005) for a wider professional audience.
His works also include a novel, Second Chances (2001). A children's novel, Orpheus Rising, 2021, "A Best Book of 2021, Indie" Kirkus Reviews, and a children's novella, The Tale Of Brian And The House Painter Mervyn, 2022.
His family is split between Los Angeles, where he helped establish the California State Park System in the Santa Monica Mountains, and London, where a married daughter lives by chance in the family seat for generations on his wife’s side. He has developed an English readership and publication record as a result, and often gives poetry readings when in London.
He was born in the then Doctors Hospital near Gracie Mansion in 1942 in Manhattan in New York City: his mother, as Lucile Wilds, was a famous model of the time, with her legs insured for $100,000, and her smile everywhere.