Young Jean Lee is a playwright based in Brooklyn; she received her grant from FCA in 2005 at age 32. She is the Artistic Director of her eponymous experimental theater company, which she founded in 2003. In order to move out of a shared—and inhospitable—loft, Lee used her FCA grant as a down payment on her own apartment in Brooklyn, which gave her a quieter place to write and make work.
Shortly after receiving her FCA grant, Lee premiered her plays Pullman, WA at PS 122 and Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven at HERE Arts Center in New York City. Since that time her work has been presented nationally at acclaimed venues such as The Kitchen, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the New Museum, On the Boards in Seattle, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, The Public Theater, Soho Rep and the Walker Art Center. Internationally, her work has toured to Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Oslo, Sydney, Vienna and Zurich among other cities. Since 2005, Lee has gone on to receive numerous grants from Creative Capital, Ford Foundation, Greenwall Foundation, Jerome Foundation and New York State Council on the Arts, among others. Recently, she received commissions from Lincoln Center Theater, Plan B/Paramount Pictures and Playwrights Horizons. Lee is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow.
