Gabriela Lee

Prior to entering the PhD Literature program at the University of Pittsburgh, Gabriela Lee earned her BA in English Studies: Creative Writing (cum laude) from the University of the Philippines, and her MA in Literary Studies from the National University of Singapore. Her research interests encompass speculative literature, youth literature, digital humanities, and contemporary Philippine literature in English.

As a scholar, she has received the 2025 Best Article Award from the Children's Literature Association for her article “When the Shoe Doesn't Fit: Reading Cinderella as Colonial Children's Literature in the Philippines,” which was published in a special issue of Children's Literature Association Quarterly on reframing Golden Age children’s literature, and was featured in an episode of the Hopkins Press podcast. She has also received the ChLA Hannah Beiter Graduate Student Research Grant for her work. As co-editor and project head of Mapping New Stars: A Sourcebook on Philippine Speculative Fiction (University of the Philippines Press, 2024) she has been shortlisted for a 2025 World Fantasy Award. She has been the recipient of the Carolyn Chambers Memorial Fellowship and the Andrew W. Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship from the University of Pittsburgh.

Her creative and critical work has also been published in various publications: her latest short story "In the Heart of the Forest, a Tree" has appeared in Silk & Sinew: Folk Horror from the Asian Diaspora (Bad Hand Books, 2025). Her 2022 fiction collection, A Playlist for the End of the World (University of the Philippines Press, 2022) was nominated for Best Book of Short Fiction (English) in the 2023 National Book Awards in the Philippines. She also received the Grand Prize at the 2019 PBBY-Salanga Awards, which was released as Cely’s Crocodile: The Story and Art of Araceli Limcaco-Dans (Tahanan Books, 2020) which also received a citation during the 2021 National Children's Book Awards in the Philippines. She was recently accepted to the 2025 Tin House Online Autumn Workshop.

She serves as a member of the Diversity Committee and the Communications Committee of the Children’s Literature Association (ChLA), and as country representative for the Philippines for the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA). She served as Transnational and Comparative Book Review Editor for the Journal of Asian Studies from 2021-2024, as At-Large member of the SFRA Executive Committee from 2023-2024, and as Treasurer for the English Graduate Student Organization (EGSO) from 2022-2023. Currently, Gabriela is on study leave from her faculty position at the Department of English & Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines while she pursues her PhD studies. She can be found online at www.sundialgirl.com.