Stellasue Lee's third volume of work, Crossing The Double Yellow Line, a full length manuscript, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.  The title came from a line in a poem that wasn’t used in the book, but was a poem included in her first body of work, After I Fall. Reviewers have written “…this line was very telling about her background.  ‘…sometimes, usually when the moon is high and darkness holds no promise,/ I think about accidents. Not the kind my father had/ where, drunk as a hoot owl, he crossed over some double yellow line….’”

Her work is intensely personal. “Reading a poem by Stellasue Lee is like a spiritual meditation on what it means to be human in this world of joy and disappointment.” (M.L. Liebler, Writer’s Voice Project of Detroit.) Diane Wakoski said of Lee’s work “She has written powerful poems of healing and forgiveness. She is a poet of deep insight and compassion.” “The compressed poems in Crossing The Double Yellow Line take us to a sense of place, to loved ones by way of sharp turns and hair-pin curves. I believe and trust the voices captured in these poems that drive us toward the vortex of what matters.” (Yusef Komunyakaa).

Raised in California by alcoholic parents, much of her poetry expresses great loss but is painfully beautiful in its verse surrounding issues of death, loneliness, and the consuming feeling of abandonment. She is quite frank, yet, her poetry is not judgmental. She simply tells the story without anger or recrimination. Her later work is about love; living a life in love and loving.

Publication credits include numerous literary journals, most recently an anthology After Shocks, which brings together 115 poets from 15 nations. It is a brilliant collection of messages dealing with recovery delivered through the language of poetry: Grief, War, Exile, Abuse, Divorce, Addiction, Injury, Illness, Bigotry, Loss of Innocence. Margie, Strong Medicine In American Journals Of Poetry. It has been written that the work that appears in this journal has an astonishing variety of styles and theme. Within the past year, Lee’s work can be found published in the Paterson Literary Review, Connecticut Review, and Quercus Review. Her work has also been translated into German.

Among her other published volumes of work: After I Fall, a collection of four Los Angeles poets, Over To You, an exchange of poems with David Widup, and 13 Los Angeles Poets, the ONTHEBUS Poets Series Number One. ( Bombshelter Press.)

As the editor of the leading literary journal in the English language, RATTLE, Lee was intensely productive, both as the editor, and in her personal work. She also teaches privately, working via the internet with students living throughout the United States. She travels a lot teaching workshops and giving university readings wherever she goes.

For her storytelling in the Los Angeles public libraries, she was recognized by the Board of Library Commissioners and Mayor Tom Bradley. Dr. Lee is a member of Pen Center USA, California Writers’ Club and she was awarded special recognition for excellence by WPFW-FM’s The Poet and the Poem.

Now Editor Emeritus at RATTLE, a literary journal, she serves presently on the editorial board at Curbstone Press, www.curbstone.org. She received her Ph.D. from Honolulu University. Stellasue was born in the year of the dragon.