Catherine J.S. Lee

Catherine J.S. Lee, an almost life-long island dweller, has been writing short fiction for most of her life and is the author of two short-story collections, the award-winning Island Secrets: Stories from the Coast of Maine (Sea Smoke Press, 2022) and A Place to Land: More Stories from the Coast of Maine (Sea Smoke Press, 2025). She is currently working on stories for a third collection.

Lee is also a haiku poet and haiga artist. Her haiku have received recognition in national and international competitions and have been published in many print and online haiku journals and anthologies from around the world, including A New Resonance 7: Emerging Voices in English Language Haiku from Red Moon Press. In 2010, her haiku collection All That Remains won the Turtle Light Press Haiku Chapbook Competition and was published in a hand-made edition of 100 copies. After selling out that edition, the collection was re-published by Sea Smoke Press in 2018. Lee edited A Splash of Water, the 2015 members’ anthology for the Haiku Society of America.

With composer Gregory Biss, Lee wrote the libretto for the Eastport Arts Center’s children’s opera, You Can’t Sit Here, which was produced and performed for the public and for area schools in the spring of 2024. She is currently trying her hand at a new-for-her form of writing, the ten-minute play.

Lee teaches English language arts in the special education program at her local high school; writes city council news and book reviews for a local newspaper, The Quoddy Tides; and serves on Eastport’s historic review board and the board of directors of the Eastport Arts Center, where she is co-manager of the literary arts program.