Ching-In Chen

Discipline: Poetry

Based In: Lake Forest Park, WA

Year at Millay: 2011

Awards/Honors: Poet Laureate, Redmond Poet Laureate Program, Redmond City Council, Redmond, WA (2024–2025); Fellow, Writers Program, Jack Straw Cultural Center, Seattle, WA (2020); Artist-in-Residence, Wildacres Residency Program, Little Switzerland, NC (2020); Finalist, The Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers, New York, NY (2018–2019); Award Winner, Poetry, Lambda Literary Award, Lambda Literary Foundation, New York, NY (2018); Artist-in-Residence, Artist INC Houston, Houston, TX (2018); Grant Recipient, Support for Artists and Creative Individuals, Houston Arts Alliance, Houston, TX (2018); Fellow, NLC Houston Fellowship, New Leaders Council, Houston, TX (2018); Artist-in-Residence, Storyknife Writers Retreat, Homer, AK (2018); Grant Recipient, Artistic Assistance Professional Development, Alternate ROOTS, Atlanta, GA (2018); Grant Recipient, Stimulus Grant, Round Ten, The Idea Fund, Houston, TX (2017); Participant, The LGBTQ Scholars of Color Conference, New York, NY (2017); Participant, Women of Color Leadership Project, National Women’s Studies Association, Baltimore, MD (2016); Fellow, Poetry Incubator, Poetry Foundation, Chicago, IL (2016); Presenter, Image Text Ithaca Symposium, Ithaca, NY (2015); Award Winner, LGBT+ Research Award, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, WI (2015); Artist-in-Residence, International Art Residency, Can Serrat, El Bruc, Spain (2015); Artist-in-Residence, Residency Program, Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, IL (2014); Award Winner, Achievement Award, Asian Faculty and Staff Association Award, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, WI (2014); Finalist, Poetry Prize, Subito Press, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO (2014); Finalist, Kundiman Poetry Prize, Alice James Books, Kundiman, New York, NY (2014); Fellow, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Brown University, Providence, RI (2013); Artist-in-Residence, Norman Mailer Center and Writers Colony, Provincetown, MA (2012); Fellow, Publicly Active Graduate Education Fellowship, Imagining America, Syracuse, NY (2011); Artist-in-Residence, VCCA Residency, Amherst, VA (2011); Participant, New York Summer Writers Institute, Skidmore College, Skidmore, NY (2009); Grant Recipient, Humanities Graduate Student Research Grants, University of California, Riverside, CA (2009); Prize Winner, L. David Eaton Science Fiction Story Contest, University of California, Riverside, CA (2009); Artist-in-Residence, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT (2007); Artist-in-Residence, Soul Mountain Retreat, East Haddam, CT (2007); Fellow, Kundiman Retreat, Charlottesville, VA (2006, 2004, 2002).

Website: http://www.chinginchen.com

Photo by Cassie Mira

Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart’s Traffic (Arktoi/Red Hen Press, 2009), recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2017, winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry), and the forthcoming Shiny City (Airlie Press, 2025) as well as chapbooks to make black paper sing and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Leslie Scalapino Finalist). Chen is co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities. They are a Massage Parlor Organizing Project core member, Kelsey Street Press collective member, Airlie Press editor and Nonfiction Coordinator for Best of the Net. They serve on the Governing Council of Seattle’s Cultural Space Agency and on the board of Seattle City of Literature and as the Poet Laureate of the city of Redmond, Washington. They received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Can Serrat, Imagining America, Jack Straw Cultural Center, EmergeNYC, and Intercultural Leadership Institute, and the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers. They collaborate with Cassie Mira on Breathing in a Time of Disaster, a performance, installation, and speculative writing project exploring breath through meditation and environmental justice. They currently teach in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the MFA program in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell.