Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of Phyla of Joy (Tupelo Press, 2012), Ardor (Tupelo Press, 2008), a July Open selection, and In Medias Res (Sarabande Books, 2004), winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize selected by Heather McHugh and the Norma Farber First Book Award chosen by Cole Swensen. Her chapbook, God’s One Hundred Promises, received the Swan Scythe Press Prize awarded by Sandra McPherson. Karen Lee has presented readings at the Japanese American National Museum, Holloway Poetry Series at U. C. Berkeley, the Program in Literary Arts at Brown University, the Lincoln Center in New York City, the Casa Romantica Reading Series in San Clemente, California, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and the Hugh C. Hyde Living Writers Series at San Diego State University. She has worked as a florist's assistant, mended books in a rare-book archive, grown cell cultures in a medical lab, read to children in a family literacy program, and taught music lessons in the field of music therapy for mental health patients. A former writing resident at MacDowell Colony of the Arts and the Millay Arts Colony, she currently chairs the English Department at a faith-based college in southern California, where she is also a novice harpist. She holds a Ph.D. in British & American Literature from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.F.A. from the Program in Literary Arts at Brown University.

Phyla of Joy (Tupelo Press, 2012), Ardor (Tupelo Press, 2008), In Medias Res (Sarabande Books, 2004), God's One Hundred Promises (Swan Scythe Press, 2002)

Best Spiritual Writing 2012 (Penguin, 2012), The Arcadia Project: Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta Press, 2012), Poets of the American West (Many Voices Press, 2010), Transnational Women Warriors: From Asia to Asian America (McFarland Press , 2010), Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves: Asian American Women Poets (Deep Bowl Press, 2009), In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writings (Impassio Press, 2006)

American Literary Review, American Poetry Journal, Asheville Poetry Review, Bellingham Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Blue Mesa Review, Carolina Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Greensboro Review, Gulf Coast, Iowa Review, Journal of Feminist Studies and Religion, Melusine: Woman in the 21st Century, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, New Orleans Review, North American Review, Poetry International, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Poetry Salzburg Review, Puerto del Sol, Rosebud, Sojourn, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Prose Poem, Versal, Witness