Author: Thomas Lee

  I have been a part of many writer’s workshops. College, post-college, online, extension school, gathering of friends. You name it. I’ve done it. For the most part, I believe workshops made my writing better. After all, there’s only so much that you can perceive regarding your own words. Unless you’re Emily Dickinson, you need…

Very few writers can actually support themselves with their writing. Since, like the vast majority of writers out there, I work during the day, people often ask me when I have time to write. After all, with a corporate job, family life, varying attempts at a social life, fantasy sports, television, travel, drinking, trading barbs…

I am Korean American and a writer. More often than not, I write about Korean American characters, though I don’t always focus on their ethnicity in my writing. I view ethnicity as one of many lenses through which one perceives the world, and it is by no means the most important one. Gender, age, class,…

When Ploughshares Editor-in-Chief Ladette Randolph told me that I won the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s contest, I felt elated and grateful. Finally! A top literary journal was publishing me. I had been published before in several smaller literary journals, but this was Ploughshares. I believed I had made a career-altering breakthrough.

Rejection is a part of writing. Many years ago, a great writer who has published several books (who shall remain nameless) told me that she still gets rejected by journals more often than she gets published. This gave me hope as a writer. Rejections from journals didn’t necessarily mean I was a bad writer. It’s…

Yes, I am a lawyer.  There are so many lawyer-writers, it’s cliche at this point.  Off the top of my head, there’s John Grisham, Scott Turow, Stephen Carter, Brad Meltzer, Amy Chua, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Min Jin Lee…and the list goes on and on.  In every genre and in every form of writing, you are likely…