We’re thrilled to introduce the 2024 Oregon Literary Fellowship recipients with individual features on our blog! Out-of-state judges spent several months evaluating the 500+ applications we received, and selected eight writers and two publishers to receive grants of $3,500 each. Literary Arts also awarded two Oregon Literary Career Fellowships of $10,000 each. The 2024 Fellowship recipients were recognized at the 2024 Oregon Book Awards ceremony on April 8.
Guidelines for the 2025 Oregon Literary Fellowships will be posted in early June. The deadline to apply is August 2, 2024.
Jenny H. Lee (she/her) is a 2024 Oregon Literary Fellow in Drama and the recipient of the C. Hamilton Bailey Fellowship. She writes about Korean-American women who juggle personal dreams with societal and cultural expectations. Her feature screenplay Gajok was a quarterfinalist for the Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. Jenny holds a BFA in painting and an MFA in design. She is currently working on a novel adapted from her television pilot screenplay, K-Town Women, and is also developing a personal narrative podcast, Voices Through Time.
Q & A WITH LITERARY ARTS
What is the most exciting thing about receiving an Oregon Literary Fellowship?
I am thrilled! This is my first writing award! I am deeply grateful and honored to be part of Oregon Literary Arts and the roster of incredibly accomplished writers. This fellowship is a huge, unexpected gift that I will always cherish. I feel like I can continue my various writing projects with a sense of joy and encouragement.
How would you describe your creative process?
Even though I accidentally spent seventeen years as a title sequence designer for film and television, I managed to write and direct a few short films along the way and continue practicing the craft of screenwriting. In some ways, I feel like I’ve always been writing, whether it’s journaling, crafting a speech for a speech club, being part of a writing meet-up doing timed prompts, sharing pages with my screenwriting support group and giving feedback, or writing personal essays and sharing them with my writing classmates. I’m currently very interested in writing a play and have been attending playwriting workshops.
What keeps you motivated and inspired as a writer?
I am continuously inspired when I read other writers and fall into their world, the lives of their characters or real-life subjects, and their voices. Sometimes I even feel the need to resist finishing a book too quickly because I don’t want the book to end! It’s been like that lately for me with Patti Smith’s M Train and Yoon Choi’s Skinship.
What are you working on right now?
I’m having fun turning my TV pilot script K-Town Women, which I co-wrote with my friend Heidi Shon, into a novel. (The script was a semi-finalist for a TV writing competition.) The novel format allows me to delve more into the characters and at this early stage, do more exploring. It’s about a group of Korean-American women in their 40s. But really, it’s about multigenerational women trying to survive and thrive between two cultures while grappling with traditional and modern views of life. Another passion project is writing and editing my podcast memoir Voices Through Time. I’d love to write a memoir one day and this podcast is a stepping stone toward that goal.
Do you have any advice for future applicants?
The first feature screenplay that I wrote and submitted to a contest was in 2006. It landed in the semi-finals of that contest. Since then, I’ve used contest deadlines as goal-posts for writing since writing was something I did on the side—before going to work, during lunch breaks, after work, or on weekends. Having contest deadlines meant I had to finish a script and submit. Don’t let the rejections stop you from trying your best and having hope. Keep writing, improving your craft, and give yourself a chance to be discovered. This year, I got lucky and next time, it could be you!
EXCERPT FROM GAJOK
JUDGE’S COMMENTS
“Jenny H. Lee’s work shines both for its technical mastery and the spellbinding narrative she weaves around Korean identity and immigration. She adeptly crafts compelling visual metaphors and dialogue that delve into the depths of human nature. Her characters are endearing, authentic, and seamlessly guide us into a feminine, diasporic perspective that is often overlooked on the big screen.”
– Ana Candida Carneiro
