2026 Nassau County Teen Poet Laureate Scholarship Award Winner.
2026 Nassau County Teen Poet Laureate Scholarship Award Winner. The Nassau County Poet Laureate Society awarded Kristen Lee a $500 scholarship and she was proclaimed Nassau County Teen Poet Laureate (NCTPL). Two finalist, Jasmine Metha and Mariela Pavlica were awarded $100 each.
Kristen Lee is a Chinese-American writer, artist, and speaker from Herricks High School in Long Island, New York. She is a two-time First Class Distinction winner in the National Council of Teachers of English Achievement Awards in Writing and has been recognized by National Public Radio, the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest, and the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, among others. Her honors also include awards from the Nassau Reading Council’s Young Authors’ Contest, sponsored by the NYS Reading Association, and the Kenneth F. Gambone Writing Contest, hosted by the Long Island Language Arts Council.
Her work has been published in The Shore, Polyphony Lit, Apprentice Writer, 1455 Books, The Howl, and Noor, among others. Kristen currently serves on the executive board of OPUS, Herricks High School’s award-winning literary magazine; is a prose editor at The Bokeh Review, an international youth-run magazine dedicated to amplifying the voices of marginalized communities through art and writing; and is enrolled in Polyphony Lit’s “How to Be a Literary Editor” training course.
Since 2024, Kristen has been working extensively on a historical fantasy novel she hopes to someday publish. Beyond the page, she has competed in the 2025 Poetry Out Loud Regional Finals and enjoys making the voices of her and others heard through community engagement. When not writing or painting, Kristen enjoys volunteering at NYU Langone Health, watching summertime baseball games, and spending time with her dog, Penthesilea.