Portland, OR: Unsolicited Press (September 6, 2022)

Paperback. Signed.

“Scapegoat features the same unnamed narrator, introduced in Lee’s first collection, To Square a Circle, in more intimate moments of vulnerability: Having Love and Having Loved. Scapegoat ebbs and flows, catching and releasing the reader along with the narrator, as he struggles to learn that to fully live, one must finally leave...whether that be a job, a home, or a marriage. Yet each time he leaves, he fails to learn, and like the prodigal son, he gives in and returns to his childhood home, to wait until something becomes familiar again.
But Fate is waiting for him there, to make sure he doesn't miss the bigger lesson: That giving in is not the same as giving up.” Individually, these poems, at times, paint a stark picture of sexual identity set against the backdrop of the southern experience, family and sacrifice, but together, they reveal a much higher purpose, telling a collective story of resilience, of forgiveness, and of second chances, especially those we must grant ourselves. They weave a deeper story that speaks to the human condition, appealing to the still small voice inside each of us that needs to be told it doesn’t matter if it’s a second, third, or fortieth chance…as long as we take it.

T.K. Lee's work has appeared in national and international publications, and crosses genres to include his prize-winning plays (On How To Accommodate Marlo’s Frying Pan; Sindication; Paper Thin), his award-winning poetry (To Square a Circle), and his critically acclaimed short fiction (“Awake,” Faulkner Award Best Story). His latest play Bob and the Tree, about painter Walter Anderson, received a 2022 Literary Artist Fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission. In October, Lee returns to the 34th Annual Eudora Welty Symposium as a featured poet on behalf of Scapegoat, his second collection. In 2018, his first collection, To Square a Circle, debuted at the 30th Annual Eudora Welty Symposium and was a nominee for the Mississippi Institute for Arts and Letters poetry prize the same year. Praise for both collections speak to Lee's “uncanny wit; impeccable sense of pacing and tone; [and for] bringing a dynamic new voice to southern poetry.” He currently serves on faculty for Mississippi University for Women's two nationally recognized MFA programs in Creative Writing and in Theatre Education.