AL In the first grade, I wrote a story called “The Rainbow Goes to Japan.” It was all of one page, maybe 30 words total, but my teacher loved it and nominated me to go to this program we had called “Young Authors.” It was a conference where you got to meet real published authors and read your story in front of an audience too. It maybe sounds cliché, but it really was life changing. There was something about writing stories and sharing them that I loved, even from early on. So, the desire to write never really left me. But when I went back to college in my 30s, I fell in love with it again, more deeply anyway. That’s when it became more of a necessity for me. I felt like I had to write—for my own sake. Publication has just been a bonus.
AW You write poetry, creative essays and other written wanderings – and that’s a description I’ve not come across before! What is the springboard, or inspiration, for these forms of writing and is it the same for all of them?
AL You are right. The market for poetry and literary/creative nonfiction is very small. I always joke there is no money in poetry and essays. There’s some truth to that, but that’s okay because I’ve never been in it for the money. I am a huge fan of essayists like Brian Doyle and poets like Mary Oliver, among many others. I also love Walt Whitman (AW Me too) and Zora Neale Hurston and Leo Tolstoy and Ray Bradbury (who, by the way, is more poet than fantasy writer, I’d argue). So, these writers certainly influenced and inspired my writing early on. But beyond published writers, honestly, everyone and everything around me is an inspiration. I believe there isn’t any truth that nature can’t teach us, if we observe and listen deeply. And that belief holds true for human nature too, which is just a subset of the first. I am constantly in awe of the people I come across and come in contact with. And the more I meet people, the more I realize everyone has a powerful story to tell, stories they need to tell. More than that, everyone is a story, made up of a thousand chapters, and all of them are worth reading. So people, their struggles, their resiliency, their weaknesses and strengths, their broken hearts and their scars which are testaments to healing—they are my ultimate inspiration.
AW Have you tried/dabbled with other genres/forms of writing for other media other than the printed word?
AL I’ve published a few poems in traditional poetry journals. But beyond poetry and essays, I’ve pretty much dabbled in it all. I’ve written screenplays, self-help, and MG/YA fiction. I’m currently working on a stage play too. Back in 2009, I wrote and self-published a MG western called Partners Again. It isn’t in print anymore, but it did well on the west coast (where I’m from) and gave me the opportunity to go into a lot of schools across WA, OR, and ID talking about the book and teaching creative writing. I am working on a second collection of essays now and then I hope the timing is right to sit down and write a novel.
AW Famous authors such as Roald Dahl and Dylan Thomas had a special space for writing. Do you have a writing shed of your own?
AL First, I’ve loved Roald Dahl since I was young. And Dylan Thomas is a powerful poet. When I was in my twenties, I put a lot of time into creating a writing space. But I did that more because it seemed like a writer thing to do, and not because the space was any more sacred than another. I would love to have my own writing place, like Thoreau, in a cabin in the woods, but for me, right now, it is more about wherever I can find peace and quiet. It can be anywhere, but I am most comfortable in the corner of my room, at my computer, with my side window looking out over nature. Around me are several literary posters I designed, but the one right in front boasts this favorite stanza of mine from a T.S. Eliot poem: “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” Also, this snippet from a much larger quote by the late essayist Brian Doyle, “I believe with all my hoary heart that stories save lives, and the telling of them and hearing of them is a holy thing, powerful far beyond our ken…”
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| Arthur's first story |
AL Eight years old? That would make it 1987, and I probably would have just spent a good couple hours watching cartoons, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So, this is actually pretty easy. I know exactly what I would say, not being as verbose then as I am now. I’d look at my older self, nod my head, and say, “Radical!” Then I’d go back to watching cartoons.
about the author… Washington-born and -raised, Arthur Thomas Lee resides in Idaho, surrounded by nature. He has a degree in English from BYU-Idaho. He is a full-time dad. He has, over the years, been lucky in writing and business but even luckier in love. With the benefit of hindsight, he says, we are all able to look back and recognize moments when our lives changed for the better. That was true for him each time one of his four sons came into the world. He thought he could not get any luckier. Then he did. After a period of heartache and hardship, he met Renee. She was not in his life, and then, one day, suddenly, she was. That, too, became true for her three kids. Arthur and Renee married in 2024, finding purpose in the paths preceding their union, and a set of hands to hold along the path that lies ahead.
In his debut collection of interconnected personal essays and poetry, Arthur Thomas Lee introduces us to myriads of individuals not unlike ourselves, people whose stories hold, between their lines, keys to greater compassion and understanding. To that end, Thin Places: Portraits, Prayers, and Liminal Grace takes us on a lyrical journey through which nature becomes our ever-present guide, difference gives way to deference, patchwork paths find purpose, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and each stranger—fighting for light in the thick of understory—transforms into familiar lifelong companion. It is, at once, a heart-felt prayer, a bold beck and call for love in the face of deep division, and for greater measures of grace along the way—all while passing our time, our limited time, on this our liminal planet.
featured review… In Lee’s heartfelt essays, the quiet joys and tragedies of life—marriage, divorce, injuries, births, deaths—prompt meditations on regrowth. The result is an entertaining and often moving homage to daily existence. A luminous collection with potent metaphors and gorgeously earthy writing.
You can get the book in e-, print-, or Audio-format Here
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