After graduating from Yale in 1973, Lee lived in New York City for several years where he worked as a taxi driver, a language teacher and a security guard.
Lee's play, Pirates (1992) premiered at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa where it won the American Express California Playwrights competition.
The Private Room, Lee's controversial play set in the prison cells of Guantanamo Bay, premiered at the New End Theatre in London in 2004.
[6] In a review of The Lost Tribe published in the Washington Post Book World, the critic wrote: "Without overwriting, Lee can convey the sprinting pace of a brush fire, the horror of an elephant slaughter, the hair-trigger tenseness of a military checkpoint."
[7] In the Denver Post, the reviewer of The Canal House wrote:"A story presented in prose so fine it nearly sings, peopled with characters who burn themselves into your mind and heart."
[8] In Publishers Weekly, the reviewer wrote:Lee's Memo to Our Journalists is a short, punchy list of editorial precautions to reporters in Iraq.
It includes such pithy advice as: "If you and your embedded unit are lost in the countryside and searching for the main road, remember that every adult male in the world lies about most things much of the time.
In June 2013, Candlewick Press published Mark Lee's first children's book: Twenty Big Trucks in the Middle of the Street.
The Wall Street Journal reviewer wrote: “As mystifying as it may be to their mothers and sisters, small boys tend to be entranced by powerful vehicles.