Born in west Texas, David Lee is the author of numerous poetry collections, including The Porcine Legacy (1974), Driving and Drinking (1979), The Porcine Canticles (1984), Wayburne Pig (1997), News from Down to the Café: New Poems (1999), and A Legacy of Shadows: Selected Poems (1999). Lee has been a boxer, pig farmer, seminary student, cotton mill worker, and the only white baseball player for a Negro League team. He received a PhD in literature, with a concentration in the poetry of John Milton, from the University of Utah.
 
Lee explores the interaction of humans and the natural world in his poetry, depicting rural landscapes and lives and often employing a rural American dialect. His collection So Quietly the Earth (2004) portrays the lands of the American Southwest.
 
David Lee has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award in Poetry and the Western States Book Award in Poetry. The first poet laureate of Utah, Lee received the Utah Governor’s Award for lifetime achievement in the arts. He taught for many years at Southern Utah State University.