In 2018, Lee founded the non-fiction journal The Willowherb Review. Receiving funds from fewer than a hundred backers on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, Lee and company paid writers and artists to produce five issues, with the project formally ending in 2022. The journal had also been funded by a grant provided by Arts Council England.[5][6]
^ ab"Jessica J. Lee awarded RBC Taylor Prize". David Godwin Associates. 17 April 2019. Retrieved 24 July 2020. RBC Taylor Prize Founder Noreen Taylor commented: "Jessica J. Lee is exactly the kind of writer we envision for the Emerging Author award. A multi-talented young person, Lee is about to break out on several fronts.
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Kristen Schott (24 April 2020). "The Language of Self-Discovery: On Jessica J. Lee's "Two Trees Make a Forest"". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 24 July 2020. JESSICA J. LEE ASKS the reader to consider slippery definitions of family in her complicated but thoughtful memoir, Two Trees Make a Forest: In Search of My Family's Past Among Taiwan's Mountains and Coasts, which weaves the political character of Taiwan with her family's own heritage and her journey of self-discovery amid the rural landscapes of the island.
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Jane van Koeverden (16 April 2019). "Jessica J. Lee wins $10K RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer Award". CBC Books. Retrieved 25 July 2020. Jessica J. Lee, author of the memoir Turning, has been awarded the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer Award, a prize that comes with $10,000 and mentorship from RBC Taylor Prize winner Kate Harris.