JC Lee

JC's Affiliations: First Year Programs, Pitt Prison Education Project

JC Lee (they/she) is interested in the essay in its many forms—personal, critical, nature, lyric, list. They regularly teach Readings in Contemporary Nonfiction, as well as Art of the Essay and First Year Seminar. Other courses include Environmental Writing, Writing the Body, and Lyric Essay. JC also teaches in the Pitt Prison Education Project, where Pitt students and incarcerated students read and write together. JC’s essays have appeared in VQR, Hotel Amerika, Mid-American Review, Jelly Bucket, Critical Quarterly, and elsewhere. The recipient of a 2017 Edward Albee Foundation Fellowship, in 2023 JC was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship to work on a book-length essay about the self-taught painter John Kane and Pittsburgh’s trees. (JC has also made a short film about John and the trees.) JC’s essay, “Mother River,” won VQR’s 2023 Staige D. Blackford Prize, and this year JC was awarded a Blue Mountain Residency to continue writing about Pittsburgh, magic, and working class bodies.